Morse’s Strength Comes in Pairs : Track: The Taylors have left their marks in the triple and long jumps. Together, they are shooting for state titles.

Coincidence has nothing to do with the fact that the same injuries have afflicted Morse’s state-qualifiers in the triple and long jumps.

Gary Taylor has been suffering the same injuries as Cary Taylor for a lifetime. They are identical twins and have grown accustomed to the tricks their bodies play on each other through some sort of fraternal osmosis.

They know it works with aches and pains, but during the CIF/Reebok State Track and Field Championships at Cerritos College today and Saturday the Taylors hope their sibling pathway will be a conduit for adrenaline.

Cary owns the state’s best mark in the triple jump (49 feet 7 inches), and Gary possesses the state’s second-best effort in the long jump (24-0), but the two need an extra push.

Cary’s state-best triple jump came in a dual meet at the beginning of the season, and Gary’s second-best long jump came at the end of April.

There has been little spring in their jumps of late, though, and both say it’s because they are nursing injuries to their left thighs and heels--the leg they use to propel themselves skyward.

In that early dual meet during which Cary hurtled 49-7, three of his four jumps were over 49 feet. But he also hurt his heel that same day, and things haven’t been the same since.

“I really thought those marks would be only the beginning,” Cary said. “I was jumping so well at the beginning of the season.”

But the Taylor’s track and field season proved only an extension of a disappointing senior year that began during the fall in football.

After the first three weeks of the football season, Cary opened a gash in his hand when he tried breaking into his own home; he was locked out. That left Morse without its starting quarterback for the next three games--and it left the quarterback wondering if scholarship offers would dry up.

“I guess it was my own paranoia,” Cary said. “But I was really worried after I cut my hand.”

There was no need to, the scholarship offers continued to pour in and eventually both Cary and Gary signed with Arizona.

Gary, too, had a difficult time on the football field. The standard he established for himself by setting a section single-season rushing record as a junior with 2,625 yards proved too lofty.

This year Gary finished more than a thousand yards below last season’s production. He ended up third in the county with 1,595 yards.

But the statistical tumble would not matter if Morse could repeat its 3-A Section championship, and with the Taylors leading the county’s top offense, that seemed a realistic goal.

It went unrealized. Morse couldn’t even get to the title game, losing to Vista, 17-10, in the quarterfinals.

“Of all the disappointments,” Cary said, “what really sticks out the most is not going to CIF (the Section championships) our senior year in football.”

Next came some travails on the basketball court--actually off the basketball court. The Taylor’s were removed from the team for missing practices while they worked out in preparation for the Sunkist Invitational indoor track meet in mid-February.

With all the valleys the Taylors wound through their senior season, the Sunkist meet proved to be an intoxicating peak.

Cary Taylor won the triple jump with a leap of 49-8 1/2, an improvement of more than a foot from his best effort as a junior (48-8 1/4). Gary Taylor placed third at 46-8 1/2.

Surely track and field would be good to the Taylors. After all, the Sunkist Invitational was an off-season meet, and marks tend to progress as the season wears on.

But the high of he Sunkist meet did not last. The twins’ habit of missing basketball practice carried over to track, and for a time they were told to leave that team.

They eventually were allowed back, but soon enough Cary suffered the ankle and thigh injuries, then Gary did.

The twins were 6 when they first noticed their bodies mimicked each other’s injuries.

“It has been happening so long, we’re kind of used to it,” Gary said. “One day I was outside playing, and I fell down and scraped my elbow, and within a couple hours, my brother had the same scar on the same elbow. He didn’t even fall, or anything. People don’t believe us, but it’s a true story.

“It started happening so often, that whenever I got hurt, my mother would always make Cary come in the house so he couldn’t get hurt, too.”

The heal and thigh injuries still linger, and now there is only one more meet at which Cary can attain the 50-foot mark in the triple jump and at which Gary can go for 25 feet in the long jump.

“So what happens in the state meet?” wondered Morse Coach Mike Klepper. “Who knows? But there’s no holding back. On the day of the finals, you have to go for it.”

One thing is certain. The Taylors would like to punctuate their year of question marks with an exclamation point.

“We’re about due for some good luck to come around,” Cary said.

The Taylors are not alone among Section athletes in hoping that good luck can overcome a season of injuries.

Southwest senior Riley Washington, who had to rebuild himself earlier in the spring after a virus caused him to lose 20 pounds, will be going for gold in the 100 and 200 meters. Washington’s 10.55 is the second-best legal 100-meter time in the state behind Merced’s Anthony Volson, who is only one-hundredth of a second faster at 10.54.

Helix 19-year-old junior Daniel Das Neves will attempt track’s most strenuous double, the 1,600 meters and 3,200 meters, but he’ll have to fight through a left toe and ankle injury that kept him from training in the weeks leading up to the section meets.

The training didn’t seem to bother Das Neves at the preliminaries where he ran a 4:08.63 in the 1,600 meters, the state’s fastest time.

But he complained of pain after winning both the 1,600 (4:09.4) and the 3,200 (9:12.84) in Saturday’s section finals. His 3,200 time was more than eight seconds off his best (9:04.02), and well off of the state’s top effort of 8:56.99, ran by San Gabriel Valley’s Angel Martinez.

Das Neves has been working out this week and should be in better shape than he was at the section finals, according to Luiz de Oliveira, a fellow native of Brazil who trains Das Neves.

Perhaps no section athlete has more to overcome than Mt. Carmel senior Allison Dring, who last year entered the state meet with the fastest time among 400-meter competitors. Dring finished second in the finals.

This time she won’t even be among the favorites as she enters with only the 10th fastest time in the state.

Dring’s season, too, has been marred by a recurring ankle sprain that first slowed her down as she prepared for the Sunkist meet in February, then kept her times slow all season. Dring has yet to approach the section record of 54.29 that she established in 1990. Her best effort this season is 56.34.

But if Dring can match last year’s performance, she has a chance of taking first place. The fastest time among competitors in that event belongs to Bakersfield’s Janice Nicholl’s, 54.62.

The ankle is healed now, but it has taken a toll--Dring missed most of the big invitationals that offer an opportunity to go against California’s best.

No matter. “Mentally,” she said, “I know what I need to do.”

Another North County runner, Fallbrook’s Milena Glusac, had to overcome poor health early in the season, and now is unsure if she can pull off what she did last year as a sophomore when she placed third at the state finals in the 1,600, then was second in the 3,200.

This year she can’t decide if she wants to double, and if she doesn’t, she’s unsure which race to drop.

“It’s a hard decision,” she said, “because I really feel my time in the 1,600 is ready to drop. And I’d like to run a good time in the 3,200 because my best so far this year was only 10:31.05, and I’d like to do better than that.”

Last year Glusac ran a county-best 10:24.61 in the 3,200. She also clocked a 4:51.29 in the 1,600.

This season her top effort in the 1,600 is 4:52.6, third best in the state.

San Pasqual’s Erin Blunt doesn’t have to make any tough decisions. She’ll double in the 100- and 300-meter hurdles. Her 43.03 time in the 300 is second-best in the state, and her 14.26 in the 100 ranks sixth.

“It will be tough,” Blunt said, “But that’s good, because strong competition makes your times drop.”

Track and Field Notes

Fallbrook’s Melanie Hand has a good chance to medal in the 800--she has the state’s fourth-best time (2:12.01). Mt. Miguel’s Amy Littlepage will take the state’s sixth best triple jump (38-8 1/2) to the meet. On the boys’ side, Lincoln senior Scott Hammond is hoping to upset Southwest’s Riley Washington in the 200 meters. Hammond has the state’s third best time (21.42), but lost to Washington (whose 21.59 is seventh best in the field) at Saturday’s section finals. . . . At today’s preliminaries, field events begin at 3 p.m. and track events at 5 p.m. At Saturday’s finals, track events begin an hour earlier.