Runners Staging a Dignified Duel : Cross-country: San Diego’s Keflezighi and Mission Bay’s Elizondo make the grade on the course and in school.

SAN DIEGO —  It’s easy to see why the county’s top two cross-country runners are so far ahead of their competition--everyone keeps stumbling over their names.

Go ahead, give it a try: Mebrahtom Keflezighi.

This one’s a syllable shorter and a little easier: Devin Elizondo.

Both are juniors and already have established themselves among the elite high school runners of Southern California.

Keflezighi, who runs at San Diego High, hails from Eritrea, an independent province of Ethiopia.

Elizondo, who runs at Mission Bay High, refers to Keflezighi as Mo, short for Mebrahtom.

In each of their three meetings this fall, they have finished football fields ahead of everyone else.

The first dual meet of the season two weeks ago proved to be something of an aberration. Elizondo won with what now looks like a Mission Valley-sized gap of 11 seconds, covering the 3.1-mile Morley Field course in 15 minutes 17 seconds.

Keflezighi began the race by taking a strong lead and, although he was able to maintain it over the first two miles, he could not hold on at the end as Elizondo burned past.

“He was just a lot stronger at the end,” Keflezighi said. “When I started to get tired, he ran past me. He’s always like that. Last year he did the same thing at the same place.”

The two marks (Keflezighi’s was 15:28), very quick for that course, appear all the more dramatic when compared to the winning time of 16:33 turned in by a senior from Point Loma during that same day on the same course in another dual meet.

Two days later, Elizondo and Keflezighi raced in the same division at the 3.1-mile Woodbridge Invitational and finished with the same time, 14:49. Elizondo, though, came in a stride ahead and was awarded the blue ribbon.

“We hit the mile together, then the two-mile together,” Elizondo remembered, “and then we finished almost right together.”

The 14:49 was the third fastest time during the day, and by far the quickest among junior runners. The next best time among juniors was 15:17.

The two losses were something of a surprise to Keflezighi, who outdistanced Elizondo in all their races as freshmen and only finished behind him once last year.

“Devin is really pumped up this year,” Keflezighi said. “He’s improved a lot.”

The two runners starred in their third episode of the season on Saturday, this time with a different outcome. Keflezighi was faster on the three-mile Laguna Hills Invitational course, coming in first in the Division III junior boys’ race at 15:02. Elizondo was right behind at 15:04.

Not only were they the fastest times during the day among all runners, including seniors, but Keflezighi set a course record for juniors and Elizondo tied the old record.

Despite their frequency, the two runners refuse to call their duels a rivalry. The word has too many negative connotations, they say, to describe their confrontations.

The preferred euphemism is competition.

“It’s just a competition,” Keflezighi said. “It helps a lot that we are in the same grade and compete at the same invitationals.”

“It’s just a competition,” Elizondo echoed in a separate interview. “We have a lot of respect for each other. We respect San Diego, and San Diego respects us, also--I hope.”

There’s not much doubt about that. San Diego Coach Ed Ramos, who is in his eighth year, credits Mission Bay Coach Dan Ungricht, in his 21st, with bringing him up to speed on how to coach a sport that, in Ungricht’s words, “isn’t fun and is very difficult.”

“In a way,” Ramos said, “Coach Ungricht and I are a lot alike. You can see a reflection of his team in my team.”

Both teams this year are doing serious damage to the reputation of the I-15 corridor schools that for the past decade have dominated section cross-country rankings. In the latest poll of coaches, Mission Bay was No. 1 and San Diego No. 3, right behind Escondido.

Ungricht said teams such as his, San Diego and Point Loma (No. 7) are catching up to North County schools because they now can recruit freshmen into their programs, and that’s putting them on more of an equal footing.

Keflezighi and Elizondo are two of the first athletes to be recruited into city cross-country programs as freshmen. Now as juniors they’re not having to play catch-up as they might have in the past.

Mission Bay has been especially fortunate with recruiting young runners. When Elizondo began running in 1990, so did classmates David Levy and Mario Marquez. Last year Roger Romero joined the trio as a sophomore.

“So you can imagine what we’re looking at for next year,” said Ungricht, who quickly added that for now he wants to take things one race at a time.

Both coaches try to stress academics as well as athletics, and with cross-country runners that is not a difficult balancing act. In a sport that offers little reward, dedication is a key factor and a characteristic that carries over into the classroom.

Keflezighi, who lives outside San Diego High’s boundary but is drawn there by its International Baccalaureate magnet, is a 4.0 student. Education, he says, comes first. That’s why his family moved here “five years ago Oct. 21” after first fleeing to Italy from Eritrea, a former Italian colony.

His family’s quest for education has made an imprint on Keflezighi, who studies until 11 p.m. each night.

There’s another date Keflezighi has embedded in his memory, this one more recent.

“May 22 of last year,” he said, “that’s when Eritrea gained control and the civil war ended. It went on for 31 years, the longest war in Africa.”

Now that it’s over, Keflezighi would like to return. He has grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins he has not seen for seven years.

“I sometimes dream of places I used to walk through,” he said. “But I was never there when it was free and I would like to see it now that it is.”

Elizondo, too, attends Mission Bay through its magnet program (architecture and engineering), and also has a grade-point average well over 3.0 while taking such classes as trigonometry with pre-calculus, advanced English, advanced history, Spanish and architecture.

One final reflection that shines through both programs is sportsmanship. Ramos is equally likely to talk about his team’s behavior at invitationals as he is its performance.

“Everywhere we go, to all the Orange County meets,” he said, “San Diego High kids are the best behaved.”

Keflezighi is equally impressed with Mission Bay’s manners.

“At a meet toward the end of last year,” he recalled, “Mission Bay and San Diego raced in different divisions, so by the time I ran, Mission Bay was done. I usually try not to concentrate on the crowd, but this time the whole Mission Bay team was cheering for me, telling me ‘You can do it, just keep it up.’ ”

No wonder “rivalry” isn’t in their vocabulary.