MT. SAC RELAYS / ORANGE COUNTY HIGH SCHOOLS : Bowman Wins With Career Best

Tina Bowman of Newport Harbor would have settled for a lower height than the one she cleared in the girls’ high jump Friday at the Mt. San Antonio College Relays.

Bowman cleared a personal best of 5 feet 8. Then she went higher.

The sophomore won in a jump-off with Danielle Boswell of Fresno Bullard High School in the invitational high school meet at Mt. SAC College.

The jump-off was needed because both jumpers missed at 5-10 after clearing 5-8 and had an equal number of misses during the competition.Both missed again at 5-10 before the bar was lowered to 5-9.

Boswell, second in the State meet last year, missed at that height. Bowman then cleared it easily.

When the officials measured the jump, Bowman got a bonus, finding out she had actually cleared 5-9 1/2--the eighth-best girls’ mark in Orange County history. Bowman’s mark also is the best in the state this year.

Bowman, fifth at State last year, had a best of 5-7 last year and had cleared 5-6 several times this season.

“I’m happy I got a personal record,” Bowman said. “But I was happy at 5-8. You can’t really get upset (in the rest of the competition) after you get a P.R.”

Bowman finished second to national leader Amy Acuff of Corpus Christi, Tex., last Saturday at the Arcadia Invitational. Acuff won at 5-10 and Bowman went 5-6. Bowman, who stands 5-feet-7, said she and the other jumpers were intimidated by the 6-2 high jumper.

That wasn’t so against Boswell in Friday’s meet. Rick Foster, who coaches Bowman, said it is only a matter of time before Bowman clears new heights.

“If you take what she did as an eighth grader (when she cleared 5-0), and then you take what she did as a freshman, clearing 5-7, (she can go higher),” Foster said. “The natural progression has her adding two inches a year.

“She’ll be jumping 6-1 by her senior year.”

For now, she joins Esperanza’s Kristy Kierulff--the 1992 State champion as a freshman with a best of 5-10--as one of the premier jumpers in the county. Newport Harbor’s Misty May, Laguna Hills’ Darci Morrison and Kierulff have cleared 5-6 this season. The county record is 6-0, set by Anaheim’s Yleana Carrasco in 1985.

Ocean View’s Christie Engesser, who on Friday signed with the University of Oregon, remains the county’s top 800-meter runner, after doubling in the 800 and 1,500-meter runs.

She started with the 1,500, placing second in 4 minutes 40.33 seconds, close to her best of 4:39.79. Angie Froese of Abbotsford Royals in Canada won in 4:32.97.

Engesser then came back in the 800 to run what was for her an uncharacteristic race. She got boxed in on the second lap after running a leisurely 68 seconds for 400 meters. Past the 500-meter mark, she worked her way out of the box and moved into fourth place. Liza Alexander of Tustin finished fifth in the 1,500 in 4:47.47.

At 600 meters, she charged into the lead, then sprinted away from the rest of the field, winning by a large margin in 2:13.2.

“There was so much pushing--actually just a lot of contact,” Engesser said. “I was OK through the first lap and then on the first turn of the second lap, all of a sudden, people came on the outside of me.”

Engesser and Ocean View Coach Beth Chilcott chalked up the race as a learning experience, although both were pleased with the time.

Trabuco Hills’ Chad Peare, who threw 191-11 in the boys’ discus at Arcadia last week--the top mark in the state--also had a learning experience Friday. He won, but with a throw of only 179-2.

“It was an early meet and I’m not a morning person,” Peare said. “It just wasn’t my day.”

Peare’s mark is still one of the best in the Southern Section, but he hopes to do better at next week’s Orange County Championships at Trabuco Hills.

“I hope to win it,” he said. “I have also got to get my shotput (mark) up to 60 and get the discus back to 190.”

Meet notes

Chad Peare of Trabuco Hills also placed second in the shotput (58-0 1/2) . . . Other top county performances included Huntington Beach’s Ben Flamm, who was fourth in the boys’ 3,000 (8:46.39); University’s Andrea Bill, who won the girls’ discus (138-0); Valencia’s Ace Riggins, who was fourth in the boys’ long jump with a county-best 22-7; Newport Harbor’s Gina Heads, who finished fifth with a county-leading shotput of 41-1 3/4; and in the 1,600 relays, the Trabuco Hills girls, who won in 4:04.47, and the Saddleback boys, who were second (3:27.12).