Veteran Volunteer Looks Forward to Duty at Olympic Festival : Track and field: Daiva Jusionis, a coach at Golden West College, receives her due as team manager for West’s women.

WESTMINSTER —  She’s been screamed at by Carl Lewis, traveled thousands of miles at her own expense, and worked in stadiums where rats outnumbered the fans in the stands.

So why would a 43-year-old mother of three want to be a U.S. track and field official--a volunteer position that demands hours each week?

Daiva Jusionis cannot answer. She’s too busy laughing.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I guess it’s the same reason most officials would tell you. For the love of the sport.”

After 11 years as a volunteer with The Athletics Congress, the governing body for the sport in the United States, Jusionis is finally getting her due. Well, sort of.

Jusionis was selected as a women’s track and field team manager at the Olympic Festival. Her job is to make sure the athletes on the West team are outfitted and credentialed and to take care of any other organizational problem that comes their way.

For her troubles, Jusionis will be given a uniform and accommodations at the UCLA dormitories. Some might see this as track’s version of the Peace Corps, but Jusionis considers it an honor. After years as just another blue blazer-wearing TAC official, Jusionis admits it’s nice to have been singled out for the job.

The Olympic Festival won’t be the only national sports festival Jusionis will be involved in this year. She and her 19-year-old son, Kes, are traveling to Lithuania later this month for the Lithuanian National Games, open to anyone of Lithuanian heritage.

Kes, a sophomore at UC Irvine, will run in the 800 and 1,500 meters. His mother, who speaks fluent Lithuanian, will go along as coach and translator.

“A couple thousand people from all over the world are converging on Lithuania for this,” Jusionis said. “We’re really excited. Kes is going to run in front of a packed stadium and I’m going to see everything my parents always talked about.”

Jusionis was born in a displaced person’s camp near Hamburg, Germany. Her Lithuania-born parents ended up there after fleeing their homeland when the Nazis invaded it during World War II. She came to the United States when she was 3, aboard a “liberty ship” crammed with immigrants.

Jusionis’ only memories of the voyage were of being incredibly seasick all the way across the Atlantic. She became so weak and dehydrated, her mother feared she would die. When the family arrived in the United States, Jusionis’ mother stuffed her with aspirin just to get her through the health inspection.

A more difficult challenge was learning English. Jusionis said she learned through song.

“I’d be walking down the street singing ‘How Much Is That Doggy In The Window,’ ” she said. “I sang it over and over. It was the only English I knew.”

Although her parents immersed her in Lithuanian culture growing up in Los Angeles--she was involved in a Lithuanian scout troop, folk dancing and special school on Saturdays--Jusionis said she had a difficult time deciding which way to raise her children. The boys wanted to spend their spare time playing sports--not learning about the ways of the old country.

When Kes started running at 8, Jusionis started, too. Soon she was president of the Blue Angels youth track club, a position she still holds. For the Southern California Assn. of TAC, she’s also secretary, a board member and the women’s track and field chairman. She’s been head cross-country coach at Westminster High School for the past three years, and recently was given a one-year term as women’s track and cross-country coach at Golden West College.

And even though she is never compensated for her time or expenses occurred as a TAC official, Jusionis says the meets make it all worthwhile. She’s worked the past three TAC Championships, the Goodwill Games at Seattle, and everything from the high school state meet to the Special Olympics.

In the world of track and field, she’s seen it all.

--At the Mt. SAC Invitational, Jusionis remembers Lewis--attempting to set a world record with his Santa Monica Track Club teammates in a 800-meter relay. He ran over to the officials at the finish line, and berated them for not telling him he was to cut in at a certain point on the track.

“It was his fault, he messed up,” Jusionis said. “You’d think a guy like him would know where to cut in.”

--At the World Veterans Games, a world championship for master runners, Jusionis was standing at the starting line for the women’s 80-and-over 1,500-meter race. One contestant jogged to the starting line and just before the gun, snatched out her false teeth and put them in the pocket of her running shorts.

--And of last month’s TAC Championships at New York’s Randalls Island--held in an old, rat-populated stadium--Jusionis laughs about the four-day comedy of errors.

“It was awful!” she said. “The stadium was falling apart. It smelled like garbage everywhere. The runways (for the long and triple jump) were so bad, the surface was bubbling.

“Someone forgot the wind gauge, the traffic was a disaster and the Sheraton (hotel) that was the meet headquarters was under renovation so the elevators weren’t working and most of us were on the 10th floor. . . . “

Jusionis can’t seem to stop chuckling.

“What else can you do but laugh?” she said. “You’d go crazy if you didn’t.”