Drillers' Baker is Girls Cross Country Runner of the Year
| Friday, Dec 31 2010 09:52 PM
Last Updated Friday, Dec 31 2010 09:59 PM
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HS-X-Country Sarah Baker of BHS wins the varsity girls Kern County Championships alone as her closeiest competitor Tijerra Lynch of Ridgeview came in a distance 2nd due to a persistant leg injury.
When Sarah Baker arrived at Bakersfield High three and a half years ago, she was a soccer player, not a cross-country runner.
"But," she said, "running is a part of soccer."
And so she joined the Drillers' cross-country team that first fall as a way to train for soccer season.
Four record-breaking years later, Baker is a cross-country runner first and a soccer player second. In fact, Baker is The Californian's Girls Runner of the Year after a season in which she won every dual meet she entered, took her fourth league title, routed the field in the Kern County Championships and had the best local time at the Central Section meet.
Baker is the first Bakersfield High athlete -- boy or girl -- to be The Californian's Runner of the Year.
"She knows what she wants, and her work ethic's there," BHS coach Steven Anderson said. "Four league titles, and I don't think she's ever lost a dual meet. That doesn't come along very often."
When Baker did come along, Anderson saw talent, and he thought it wise to let her know the opportunities his sport had to offer, too.
"We had that conversation as a freshman and also as a sophomore," the coach said. "I said, 'Sooner or later, you're going to have to make a choice.' She's so competitive, I'm sure she would have done well there, too."
The choice finally came this past summer, when Baker decided that she'd sit out the fall season of club soccer and focus on running.
"I made a really big switch," said Baker, who still suits up for the BHS soccer team. "I knew it was coming. I love soccer, but I love running.
"... I've just learned to enjoy running. I've learned to love it so much. At first I was just kind of doing it to be with a team, but now it's my senior year and I was leading the team, and I just fell in love with it."
The extra work in the summer paid off. Baker won the season-opening East Bakersfield Invitational by 15 seconds, foreshadowing a dominant local season in which she had the best Kern County time at 10 of 11 races. She finished fourth in the prestigious Mt. SAC Invitational Division I race and, a week later, set the BHS three-mile school record with a 17:46 at the Kern County Championships at Hart Park.
"It just felt like a great year all around," Baker said. "I was happy with it."
With her performance at Mt. SAC and the county championships in early November, Baker seemed to be peaking at the right time. But the week of the Central Section meet, she became ill.
"We tried to downplay it," Anderson said, "but you could tell she wasn't 100 percent."
Baker still had the fastest county time of the day, a 19:25 on the 5-kilometer Woodward Park course, but she missed a state berth in the ultra-competitive Division I field by one spot.
"She got as close as possible without making it," Anderson said. "You work so hard and she deserved to go so bad -- Division I sent 25 or 26 girls, and she beat 15 of them (other runners qualified with their teams). So it's like, 'How's that fair?'
"Would it have been nice to get there? Absolutely. But I don't think it takes anything away from what she's done."
Baker will have other chances to reach big races -- and in cooler climates, at that. She's being recruited by Northern Arizona, UC Davis and Montana State.
Soccer, alas, sounds like a thing of the past.
"I played soccer for a long time, and I thought that's where I was going to go, but I ended up running," Baker said. "I've definitely grown into the sport."
