Getting a big break

Mike Sciacca

Gabe Ornelas suffered a bad break nearly a year ago, yet the

Huntington Beach youngster has bounced back from that setback to inflict

a big break of his own.

In an Ocean View School District middle school cross country meet held

last week at Huntington Central Park, Ornelas, an eighth-grade student at

Mesa View Middle School, broke the district record in the boys’

eighth-grade 1 1/2 mile run.

Actually, Ornelas really didn’t just break the old mark -- he

shattered it.

“It was just one of those runs where I felt really good about my

performance. I had no idea that I ran that time, though,” said the

gregarious 14-year-old.

Ornelas ran the race in a time of 7:18. The old mark? It was listed in

the district record books at 7:32, set a few years back by Vista View’s

Josh Sealy, now a sophomore runner at Fountain Valley High.

That’s 14 seconds better than the previous record.

It might be a tough mark to beat.

“Yeah, but records are broken all of the time,” Ornelas laughed, when

asked if his time might stand as the district record for quite some time.

Ornelas established the new mark in the second meet of the 2002 middle

school cross country season and just eight months after an accident had

put him well off course.

Last April, Ornelas, who played local club soccer for Wolfpack, broke

his left leg in a match. He had run in just one district cross country

meet when he fractured his left tibia, which forced him to miss the

remainder of the 2000-01 meet season.

“That was tough,” he said. “I was really bummed but still made it out

to every one of our meets.”

Ornelas was there at every Mesa View competition, his coach, Kurt

Lundberg said, offering his teammates moral support from the sideline,

much the same way he did Sunday when he and some of his classmates

volunteered their time to work the Pacific Shoreline Marathon.

The Mesa View students, who left at 5:30 a.m. for Sunday’s event,

cheered on runners and also handed out water bottles to the competitors.

“I have had a lot of great runners come through this school over the

last few years but none that love running like Gabe does,” said Lundberg,

who is in his fifth year as a physical education teacher and athletic

director at Mesa View. “No one has been within 30 seconds of Gabe in the

three years he has been at this school and he is determined to make

himself better each race.”

Ornelas said he began running at age 4 and got into the sport due to

the fact that his parents, Ralph and Susan, were avid runners and had

competed in several marathons. He trained with his dad and spent time in

the gym to get his left leg which, he said, had become “really skinny,”

back in shape.

“It’s 100% right now. I was determined to get out there and run again

but I couldn’t have done it without the support of my family and friends

and my coach and teammates,” he said.

Ornelas, who said he began competing at city meets about the same time

he got into running, began to get noticed in district competition when he

set the district’s sixth-grade record with a time of 8:28. A year later,

as a seventh-grader, he earned his second district record by setting a

new race mark with a time of 7:47.

That’s three district records in three years of middle school

competition.

Actually, Ornelas thought he had set the eighth-grade record in a Jan.

17 meet. He was informed that the record time to beat was 7:38, and he

went on to finish that race in what was thought to be a new record time

of 7:33.

When the race was complete, he was then informed that a mistake had

been made, and that the standing record time was indeed 7:32.

“I was a bit bummed about that, but I just went out the next week and

beat that time even better,” he said.

Mesa View won the seventh-grade boys’ cross country title last year.

Following today’s district meet at Huntington Central Park, the only

event left this season is the district finals slated for Feb. 7 at the

same park course.

* MIKE SCIACCA is the education and sports reporter. He can be reached

at (714) 965-7171 or by e-mail at michael.sciacca@latimes.com.