Foothill’s Ashley Selman Makes a Point, but Not as Often as She’d Like

Ashley Selman, a senior at Foothill High School, is not the best-known track and field athlete in Orange County. Her top marks in the shotput, long jump and hurdles, though well above average, do not threaten county records.

So why, then, has USC offered her a full scholarship? And how has her name come to be a common one in Track & Field News?

The answer is simple if you understand that Selman’s best event, the one that ranks her No. 3 this season among the nation’s prep competitors, isn’t allowed in California high school competition.

Selman throws the javelin, an implement made of steel and aluminum that weighs 600 grams and, for aerodynamic purposes, is spear-shaped and sharp.

The CIF ruled the javelin throw too dangerous for high school competition and banned its use for all CIF-sanctioned meets. The javelin throw in high school is allowed by only 16 states, two of which--Louisiana and New Mexico--allow it for boys’ competition only.

Selman, then, can throw the javelin only outside high school competition--in weekend age-group meets sponsored by The Athletics Congress or, as an unattached athlete, at all-comers meets at colleges and universities.

It was at one such meet, the April 8 USC Twilight Meet, that Selman entered her first javelin competition this year and threw a career-best 154 feet. It was the best high school mark in the country at the time.

“I had heard Ashley was a pretty good athlete,” Mike Bailey, USC heptathlon coach, said. “But when I started finding out she was throwing over 150, well, let’s just say for a high school kid, that’s very unusual. Most state meets are won at 140.”

Since April 8, Selman has been surpassed only by Greta Semsroth of Wichita South (Kansas), who leads the nation at 160-2, and Brenda Bessner of Washington School for the Deaf, second at 156-2.

Both Kansas and Washington states allow high school javelin competition.

Does Selman feel cheated by the CIF’s ban on the javelin?

“Obviously, since its my best event, I’d like to have it (in high school competition),” she said. “But I can understand why they don’t. Anyway, it gives me more time to work on other things.”

Those being the four events she competes in for Foothill: the shotput, (in which she holds the school record at 39-1 1/2); the long jump (a best of 18-0); the 100-meter hurdles (14.8 seconds), and the 300-meter hurdles (46.2).

She is often the Knights’ top scorer.

“Ashley is a phenom,” Foothill Coach Jerry Whitaker said. “We don’t even have a hurdle coach here, but she’s one of the county’s best.

“She’s the best track and field athlete to ever go through Foothill High, and she’s probably the best overall athlete the school’s ever had as well.”

Selman, who made first-team all-league in cross-country last fall and was named the league’s most valuable basketball player, has a 4.1 grade-point-average and is the school’s girls’ athletic commissioner.

She was also named one of five homecoming princesses last fall.

“Ashley always forgets to mention that one,” Cindy Selman, her mother, said.

It was Cindy Selman who gave Ashley, then 6, and sister Alycia, then 10, their start in track and field.

“My husband Jack had played football and run track at Orange High,” she said. “Since I only had two girls, well, neither of them were going to play football, so I figured it would be fun for their dad to have the girls involved in something he did.”

As it turned out, it was most fun for Ashley, who, at 6, ran her first race--a 50-yard dash--at the Orange Rotary Relays at Fred Kelley Stadium in Orange.

“They stuck her in a race with a lot of older kids,” Cindy Selman said. “She didn’t win, but she had fun competing. That’s when we first noticed it. Ashley had such a love for competition.”

And a love for the sport itself. While many of her friends played softball or soccer, Selman wanted only to compete in track.

In 1977, Selman set a Tustin city softball throw record for 7-year-olds at 99-feet 3-inches. That record still stands.

According to Steve Blankenhorn, Tustin Park and Recreation Dept. director, last year’s winning softball throw for 7-year-olds was 40-0 for girls, 81-0 for boys.

“From 1978 to 1983, Ashley set seven records in the softball throw, long jump and high jump,” Blankenhorn said. “I remember her being a very competitive little kid.”

When Selman got too old for the softball throw (Tustin city meets offer it through age 13), Jack Selman realized his daughter’s arm was far too strong to go to waste. So for Christmas, a new javelin was tied with a ribbon and waiting under the tree for Ashley.

With her parents applying everything they could learn from mail-order track and field technique books and films into her daily workouts, Selman practiced the javelin, hurdles and long and high jumps as often as she could get to a track.

“My husband or I would take her; I still go along to give her moral support,” Cindy Selman said. “It would be just like going to Little League every day, except Ashley would practice all by herself. She’d work on sprinting one day, hurdles the next, javelin after that. . . .

“I usually helped her out by measuring her throws or retrieving the javelin. You know, I absolutely love track and field now. I don’t know what I’ll do when she’s gone.”

Her first summer with a javelin, Selman, then 14, won her first national title at TAC junior national championships at Brigham Young University.

Last summer, Selman won it again, this time at TAC Junior Olympics, again at BYU. She also placed fourth in the heptathlon.

Although her best heptathlon performance--4,376 points two years ago at the Mt. SAC Relays--isn’t close to the national high school record of 5,237 set in 1982 by Fountain Valley’s Sharon Hatfield, Selman hopes that improvement will come quickly at USC.

Bailey thinks it’s a certainty.

“Ashley’s really, really raw,” said Bailey, who wooed Selman away from several other interested recruiters, including UCLA’s Art Venegas, one of the most respected throwing coaches in the nation.

“She’s never really had any coaching. Her mechanics of hurdling aren’t anywhere what they could be, and her running style could improve, too.

“There’s no question that she’ll qualify for nationals (NCAA championships) as a freshman next year. And I think she has a good chance of qualifying for the heptathlon (as a freshman), too.”

Selman and Bailey believe it is conceivable that, by her senior year, Selman could be throwing 200 feet. Karin Smith of San Luis Obispo set the American collegiate record of 211-5 in 1981.

What does Selman think of such possible success?

“When I was little, it was tough to ever imagine being real good, like an Olympic athlete or something,” she said. “I mean, I always looked up at those people like they’re so great. I was just real serious about always doing my best.

“But this is the first year I ever really seriously thought about something like the Olympics. I mean, I still feel the same way about things, it’s just that I’m setting my goals a little higher.”