Three years ago Mike Perez wasn”t sure if baseball or track would be his spring sport of choice. It looks like he made the right decision.
And it wasn”t baseball.
Perez, 18, who graduated from Lower Lake High School just a few weeks ago, is the Lake County Record-Bee Athlete of the Year for boys” sports following his incredible 2005-06 sports season, one that saw the Lower Lake senior reach the state championships in two different sports.
Perez finished fourth in the CIF State Cross Country Championships last November in Fresno and he reached the CIF State Track Championships last June in Norwalk, placing ninth in the 1,600-meter run.
Incredible? You better believe it. Unexpected? Only if you”re not Mike Perez.
Though a solid runner during his junior year when he reached the state finals in cross country and placed 67th in the Division IV field, Perez didn”t advance past the Meet of Champions in track, which is the qualifying meet for the state championships. He finished 11th at the MOC in the 1,600 in 4:30.80, missing the state cut by more than three full seconds. His best time in that event was 4:29.34. In terms of the state scene, Perez wasn”t even a blip on the radar screen.
So what happened between his final race at the Meet of Champions in Berkeley in the late spring of 2005 and the start of the high school cross country season some four months later? Did someone hit a light switch and make this guy Forrest Gump-like quick?
“People always ask me what happened, like it”s one thing that made me faster,” said Perez. “They always ask me that. I don”t think it was any one thing. I really don”t know what made the difference, but I think it was a whole bunch of things.”
For starters, according to Perez, his body matured, his mental toughness increased and his offseason training — between the end of his junior year and start of his senior year — paid huge dividends.
“I didn”t train at all (between my sophomore and junior years),” Perez said.
Another factor, according to Perez, was the Meet of Champions at Berkeley at the end of his junior year.
“I knew I could run with those guys,” Perez said of the 10 runners who beat him to the finish line in the 1,600. “I knew I could keep up with them and beat them, but I didn”t … and it pissed me off. So right there I decided I was going to make the state finals my senior year. I knew I could do it physically but I had to be mentally tougher. Really, I think 60 to 70 percent of my improvement this season was mental.”
Before he could punch his ticket to the state meet in track, Perez had a cross country season in front of him and he didn”t disappoint. A fifth-place finish in the North Coast Section Championships was his best showing ever at that event, but he wasn”t pleased.
“I didn”t run as well as I should have and that bugged me,” Perez said. “I was determined to beat those guys at state.”
And he did.
Perez finished fourth in the state, completing the 3.1-mile Woodward Park course in 16 minutes, 4 seconds. In the process, he beat all four of the runners he had finished behind the previous weekend at Hayward.
The track season, a rainy mess for most of Lake County”s track teams and athletes, was nothing but a string of successes for Perez, who hit the road along with coach Bob Galloway to compete in all the top meets in Northern California.
Still, before his first competition, the Piedmont Distance Festival on March 18, Perez, despite a spectacular cross country season, was an unknown among the state”s track elite. And he understands why.
“My fastest 1,600 my sophomore year was 4:52 and I cut that to 4:29 my junior year,” Perez said. “I knew I was going to have to be 20 seconds faster my senior year. I figured I could do it.”
The Piedmont Distance Festival provided Perez with his coming-out party. In his 2006 debut, he won the 1,600 in 4:16.8, an improvement of 13 seconds from his best the previous year. The time also was tops in the state at that point of the season, and he became an instant celebrity when DyeStatCal.com, which bills itself as the “Internet home of high school track,” made Perez its cover story.
“When I ran that first 1,600, it was like everyone knew who I was after that,” Perez said. “When I went to my next meet, these Bay Area guys were coming up to me saying, Hey, I know you. Good job.””
Perez didn”t mind the new-found fame, though it took some getting used to.
“It”s kinda cool,” he said. “But it was a whole new experience.”
Perez received much adulation both at his own school and the schools he traveled to after Piedmont.
“One time I was talking to a group of girls and they told me I was the nicest runner they had ever met,” Perez said. “Then one of the girls said, You”re the nicest good runner we”ve ever met.””
Always approachable before and after his running events, Perez said the same couldn”t always be said of many of his competitors during the season. While some of them were nice guys, others were not. After all, Perez was no longer just a face in the crowd, he was the competition.
“Some of them were real butts,” Perez said. “I would say hi to them and some would turn the other way … or barely look at me.”
Perez said he always tried to be gracious.
“Learning to tell people how I”m fast without doing it in a cocky way is tough sometimes,” Perez said. “People would come up to me and tell me I”m fast and it”s hard not to agree with them without sounding cocky, but I tried.”
Perez learned something else about the price of fame. Once you start winning, it”s expected.
“That really bugged me,” he said of the media coverage of the Redwood Empire 2A Meet on May 20 in Novato.
While Perez easily won the 1,600 in 4:15.86 to qualify for the Meet of Champions, he finished second to Healdsburg”s Tim Murphy by .69 seconds in the 800.
“All they wanted to talk about was how he beat me in the 800, not that I had won the 1,600,” Perez said.
Between the Piedmont meet on March 18 and the Redwood Empire Championships on May 20 in Novato, Perez”s season was a rapid-fire string of career bests and state bests:
* At the St. Francis Track & Field Carnival on March 25 in Mountain View, Perez won the mile race in 4:13.3 (or 4:11.97 if converted to 1,600 time). Trailing with about 400 yards remaining, the track PA announcer said that the race leader Ben Sitler of St. Francis High School “was beginning to pull away.” That”s when Perez said he “woke up” and began his kick. He beat Sitler by 40 yards to win the race.
* At the Oakland Invitational Relays on April 1, he won the 800 in 1:55, the fastest time in the state at that point of the season and the second-best time in the nation. And with only 25 minutes to rest up, he came back to win the 3,200 his least favorite event in 9:31.47.
? At the April 8 Arcadia Invitational, considered my many as a preview of the state meet, Perez finished fifth in 4:14.47 while battling the likes of A.J. Acosta of El Camino High School and Michael Coe of Cabrillo High School, bitter rivals themselves who would go on to finish 1-2 at the state meet. However, Coe won that day in 4:08.14.
* At the April 21 West Valley Invitational in Chico, Perez finished second in a hotly contested 800, finishing in 1:52.13 behind Marlon Patterson”s 1:52.09 for Franklin High School of Stockton.
* At the April 22 Bay Area Top Eight Meet in Union City, Perez”s season reached its zenith as he won the 1,600 in a personal-best 4:09.13, the best time ever by a Redwood Empire runner, small school or large, according to the Santa Rosa Press Democrat.
* At the April 29 Sacramento Meet of Champions, a weary Perez (who had just returned from a college visit at Northern Arizona University) still managed a third-place finish of 4:14.73 against another all-star cast of runners.
* In his only Lake County appearance of the season, an unchallenged Perez ran a leisurely 4:33.1 to win the 1,600 during the Lake County Meet at Clear Lake High School in Lakeport. No one else was even close.
* At the Coastal Mountain Conference championships on a warm May 13 afternoon in Ukiah, Perez picked up the pace a bit and won the 800 (1:56) and the 1,600 (4:19) on the all-weather track at Mendocino College in Ukiah.
On May 15, Perez didn”t have to run at all. He did sign a letter of intent to attend Cal Poly San Luis Obispo on a combination athletic/academic scholarship that amounts to a full ride.
After battling Murphy in the 800 and winning the 1,600 the following weekend at the Redwood Empire 2A Meet in Novato, Perez returned to the Meet of Champions, his final stop during his junior year, and made amends by winning the 1,600 in 4:15.13 and earning his long-sought-after berth in the state meet.
Would there be a Cinderella-type finish for the hard-charging Perez at the state finals the weekend of June 2-3 at Norwalk?
Unfortunately not. Although he ran well enough during qualifying — finishing third in his heat — to reach the finals, a virus Perez had been battling for the better part of two weeks finally caught up and overtook him in the 90-degree heat during the 1,600-meter final at Cerriotos College. Acosta fought off Coe to win in 4:04.95, while Perez, who challenged early in the race, ran out of gas over the final half and finished in 4:19.61, last in the field of nine finalists.
“I was done,” Perez said. “I was so tired. I was physically and mentally exhausted. It was a long season.”
It took Perez another two weeks before his physical condition improved to the point where he even felt like running again. “But now I want to run,” said Perez, who has been following an offseason Cal Poly-SLO training regimen.
“Right now I”m building up to where I”m supposed to be,” he said.
While Perez is confident he can crack the 4-minute mark next season, he also knows that the challenges ahead of him are immense.
“Now I”m kind of the big fish in a small pond,” Perez said. “Next year I”ll be a regular fish in an ocean (at Cal Poly). I think I can win there … I know I can. I”ll have training partners and I”ll have training facilities that are great, especially compared to what I had here. I can”t wait.”
Though he”s not exactly sure what his major will be at Cal Poly, Perez said he would like to enter the graphic communications field. “Graphic design with a business application,” he said.
Just like Forrest, Perez never anticipated that running would lead him anywhere except where he was going on that particular day. Like Forrest, he was wrong. He”s headed to college and what he hopes will be a better life, with academic degree in hand.
