She’s Hoping for Another Run at Glory

When Nicole Blood quit running for her New York high school’s elite distance program last spring, her decision drew nearly as much attention as any race she had ever won.

And there had been plenty of victories. Blood won her first cross-country state title as an eighth-grader at Saratoga Springs High.

As a junior, she led her school to its fourth consecutive state title and a victory at the inaugural Nike Team Nationals in Oregon. Many believed Blood was the cornerstone of the greatest high school girls’ cross-country team ever assembled.

Rarely a day went by when she wasn’t mentioned in the same breath as Mary Decker, a Southern California native who is considered America’s greatest female middle-distance runner.

But a disagreement between Blood and her high school coaches -- she wanted to take a season off to recuperate from a knee injury -- led to her quitting the team, though she continued to compete on her own.

Now an 18-year-old senior at Simi Valley Royal High, Blood will be out to prove herself again in the girls’ 1,600 meters tonight in the Southern Section Masters meet at Cerritos College.

Blood, who moved with her family to Southern California in February, finished a disappointing second in the 1,600 and 3,200 Saturday at the section’s Division I championships. It was her first loss on the track to another high school runner in more than two years.

Particularly difficult, Royal Coach Jay Sramek said, was her runner-up finish to Shannon Murakami of Saugus in the 1,600, the event in which Blood will continue to compete this postseason.

Just before the final lap Saturday, Blood took the lead, but Murakami snatched it back with about 250 meters to go and pulled away to win in a division-record 4 minutes 44.32 seconds. Blood finished in 4:51.03.

“She was a little surprised there by Murakami’s move,” Sramek said. “You could see it just broke her spirit.”

Blood will get another chance today, when she and Murakami will be joined by the other seven fastest runners from all the divisions -- notably, Corona del Mar senior Annie St. Geme, the defending state champion in the 1,600, who won the Division III race in 4:59.03, and sophomore Christine Babcock of Irvine Woodbridge, who won the Division II race in 4:49.34 -- at the state-qualifying meet.

Blood began grabbing headlines long before any of her current counterparts, thanks, in part, to New York high school athletic regulations that allow athletes in the seventh and eighth grades to participate in varsity sports.

As a sophomore at Saratoga Springs, she won her first of three consecutive Foot Locker Northeast Regional cross-country titles. At the end of that school year, she won the mile at the Adidas Outdoor Championships in Raleigh, N.C., in 4:42.40 -- the fastest mile ever run by a high school sophomore girl.

She defended her Northeast Regional title as a junior but two weeks later finished 21st at the Foot Locker National Championships in San Diego.

With barely a day off, Blood turned her attention to the indoor track season, where she competed independent of the Saratoga Springs program.

Midway through that season, her knee began to cause her problems. After finishing the season, she requested time off from the start of the spring outdoor season.

However, she said her Saratoga Springs coaches would not accommodate her, and that, Blood said, represented the final straw in an already strained relationship.

“I was injured at the time and I felt I needed a season off and they weren’t big on taking seasons off,” she said.

Linda Kranick, who has been sharing coaching duties at Saratoga Springs with her husband, Art, for three decades, declined to discuss details of Blood’s departure from the program and referred questions to Marc Bloom, publisher of an East Coast-based running magazine and a follower of Blood’s career since its beginning.

The main problem, Bloom said, was that the Kranick’s team-oriented goals didn’t seem to mesh with Blood’s.

“Nicole developed her own agenda, along with her family, and that agenda was somewhat incompatible with the team agenda,” Bloom said. “Once you separate yourself from the team, coaches don’t take that very well.”

Blood spent five weeks rehabilitating her knee and gradually resumed racing, competing in open collegiate meets as an unattached entrant. Last summer, she won her first USA Track and Field junior national championship, taking the 5,000 meters in 16:30.90 to establish a New York high school record.

In November, she became only the second girl and third runner overall to qualify for four Foot Locker National Championships. However, once in San Diego, she was 28th in a field of 40, her poorest finish in four appearances.

“Every year I’ve been there I’ve been the favorite, but my highest finish is seventh,” she said. “You can come up with all these excuses, but what it comes down to, it’s just not my course.”

However, Blood signed last fall with a West Coast school, Oregon, considered hallowed ground for serious distance runners.

Motivated by a desire to watch his stepdaughter compete in college and to be near relatives in Corona, Jerry Buff, an appraiser for an insurance company, asked for a transfer to Southern California.

Blood didn’t waste time locating to her next school. She had forged a friendship with Royal senior Michael Cybulski, the defending state champion in the 3,200 and a key member of the Highlanders’ nationally ranked boys’ cross-country program.

After exchanges of e-mails, Blood’s family was sold on Royal and rented a house in Wood Ranch.

Her first race for Royal was a relay. “That was a lot of fun,” she said. “I really missed that.”

In April, Blood won the invitational mile at the Mt. San Antonio College Relays in 4:51.87 and the 1,600 and 3,200 at the Ventura County championships.

“It has been a match made in heaven,” Royal Coach Sramek said. “Way better than I ever imagined.”