CROSSROADS

How good was Amber Steen’s cross-country season?

Even the worst race for the Newport Harbor senior turned out better than last year’s.

Steen smashed her previous best time on every course she tried this season, from the hilly Mt. San Antonio College layout to the speedy track at Woodward Park in Fresno. She defended her Southern Section Division II title with room to spare, and finished 33 seconds faster than she did at the 1999 state finals, despite running in 45-degree weather.

“Every race I improved,” said Steen, The Times’ Orange County girls’ runner of the year, who plans to attend either UC Irvine or Arizona. “I think that was one of my biggest accomplishments.”

Steen’s impressive resume dates to her freshman track and field season, when she won the 1,600 meters at the Sea View League finals. Steen blew past favored teammate Alicia McFall in the final straightaway to win in 5 minutes 9 seconds.

Steen was the No. 2 runner behind McFall during her sophomore cross-country season, defeating her at the Stanford Invitational but otherwise staying in the shadow of her senior teammate.

Santa Margarita senior Lori Mann, who won the Sea View League cross-country title over McFall as a sophomore, wasn’t paying much attention to Steen back then.

“I didn’t even know who she was,” Mann said. “But then she got really, really good. She came out and beat me our junior year and I’ve been chasing after her ever since.”

Steen really emerged toward the end of her sophomore track season, when she won the 1,600 at the Southern Section Masters meet.

She came back her junior cross-country season and defeated Mann by six seconds to win the sweepstakes race at the Orange County Championships, then beat Agoura’s Laura Jakosky to win the Division II section title. Mann, who was coming back from a quadriceps injury that kept her out of her sophomore track season, finished fifth.

“For her to come out and beat me my junior year,” Mann said, “was really frustrating.”

After another successful track season last spring, Steen showed she was geared up for her final cross-country season at the Laguna Hills Invitational in early September, winning the Division II junior/senior race by 47 seconds. Her time of 17:58 on the three-mile course was also 42 seconds faster than her time the previous season.

The next week at the Woodbridge Invitational, Steen was matched against Glendale Hoover’s Anita Siraki, who eventually won her second consecutive Division I state title. Steen finished second--56 seconds behind Siraki--in the fastest time among county competitors.

Steen’s season hit a speed bump at the Orange County Championships two months ago, when she finished second to Fountain Valley’s Julie Allen in the sweepstakes race at Irvine Park. But her time of 17:30 was still 14 seconds faster than what she ran while winning the race the previous year.

“That really didn’t fire me up to run better because it was like, ‘Hey, I had one bad race,’ ” Steen said. “I didn’t even consider it a setback because I [had set a personal best].”

But Steen did set out to prove she was, indeed, the best runner in the county this season.

The week after the county championships, she finished second in the team sweepstakes race at the Mt. San Antonio College Invitational, then hustled over to the finish line to see if her time would hold up against Allen, who was running in the individual sweepstakes race about 20 minutes later. When Steen saw that her time was four seconds faster than Allen’s, she claimed a moral victory.

“It was the same course at practically the same time,” Steen said at the time. “She beat me last week and I beat her this week.”

Steen then backed up her claim by posting the county’s fastest times while defending her Division II title and finishing fifth at state.

Steen also got one last chance to race against Allen at the Foot Locker Cross-Country West Regional at Mt. San Antonio College on Dec. 2, where she passed the 1999 Times’ runner of the year midway through the race and finished 10th overall.

“That was a great finish to the season,” Steen said. “I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”