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Miller takes over BHS cross-country program

Tamara Miller is now the head coach of both the Sullivan Middle School cross-country team and the Bonsall High School cross-country team.

Danny Costa, who was the official Bonsall head coach for the Legionnaires' first meet of the season, remains as a coach. Costa and Miller agreed on the transition Sept. 23, and Miller first led the Bonsall runners in practice Sept. 24 while coaching the Legionnaires' Sept. 27 meet.

"I'm really excited to work with Bonsall," Miller said.

Miller and Costa are both 1993 Fallbrook High School graduates and both ran for the Warriors. They previously knew each other from pre-school and from La Paloma Elementary School.

Costa headed Bonsall's cross-country program during preseason practice as well as during the Legionnaires' first meet of the season Sept. 18, which was a Frontier Conference cluster meet.

Bonsall's boys placed third among the five Summit League teams with the minimum five runners needed for a team score. Bonsall's girls' team only had four runners.

"I told Danny that I would work on getting Milana back and other girls," Miller said.

Milana Collier ran for Miller on the 2016 and 2017 Sullivan teams and was on Bonsall's team in 2018. Miller brought Collier back to the Bonsall team, and Bonsall fielded six girls for the Sept. 27 Coach Downey cross-country Classic meet.

"I was able to reach out," Miller said.

Costa gave Miller the leadership of the team, although Miller said that she is in charge of workouts while Costa handles other aspects of the program. "He's still a part of it," Miller said. "We still coach together."

Miller's commitment to coaching the Sullivan students preceded her willingness to take over the Bonsall team, so if Sullivan and Bonsall have a meet on the same day Costa will be the Legionnaires' coach.

"He's been there helping," Miller said. "I still feel like I'm coaching with Danny."

Sullivan has Monday and Friday practices in the morning before school while practicing in the afternoon after school lets out on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Sullivan students are released for the day earlier than the Bonsall students, so although they are on the same campus the Sullivan and Bonsall runners can't train together although Miller has invited the Bonsall athletes to join their Sullivan counterparts at the morning practices.

The Sullivan meets and the Bonsall meets are usually on different days of the week.

"Basically, I'll be coaching two meets a week," Miller said.

The first North County Middle School cross-country League meet of 2019 was held Sept. 26. Sullivan's sixth-grade and seventh-grade boys placed third among the teams in that division while the Wildcats were fourth as a team in the race for sixth-grade and seventh-grade girls.

"The real excitement comes from my eighth-grade girls," Miller said.

Cross-country team scores add the positions of a school's first five finishers, so 15 points would be a perfect score. Sullivan's eighth-grade girls won that division with 25 points while individual runners finished first, third, fourth, seventh and 10th. San Elijo Middle School in San Marcos had the second-place score of 63 points.

Sullivan's eighth-grade boys also finished first as a team Sept. 26 with 52 points. San Elijo accumulated 62 points for second place.

What is now the Coach Downey cross-country Classic was founded in 1988 by St. Augustine High School coach Jerry Downey and was originally the St. Augustine Invitational. After Downey died the annual meet for small schools was renamed after Downey in 2016. The meet is held on the Morley Field course in San Diego, and all races are 5,000 meters or 3.1 miles.

The team scores are separated by CIF division. Cross-country still uses enrollment rather than competitive balance to determine divisions, and Bonsall is in Division V. The Coach Downey cross-country Classic separates Division IV and Division V teams, and Bonsall's boys placed eighth among the 11 Division V teams with at least five runners while the Bonsall girls were fifth among the six Division V schools with enough participants for a team score.

"I'm happy with their performance," Miller said.

A focus on technique rather than position was Miller's goal for the races.

"I used the meet to give them some things to apply," she said.

The runners executed those practice goals at the meet.

"That's all I could ask for," Miller said.

Austin Alanis had a time of 17 minutes 24 seconds, which placed him 11th among the Division V runners and 21st among the 177 varsity race boys from all divisions. The girls' varsity race had 112 finishers from all divisions and a time of 24:18 made Collier the 52nd overall finisher and the first Bonsall runner across the finish line.

Collier's brother also ran for Bonsall High School last year, but Max Collier graduated in 2019 and ran for Palomar College rather than Bonsall High School in the meet which also had a community college division. Collier finished 15th in the men's community college race.

"I can't take any credit for him at all," Miller said.

Miller said that Max Collier's participation on a community college team meets one of her goals, specifically for the scholastic runners to continue their career at the next level.

"My goal is to ensure that any runners that run for Sullivan that do go to Bonsall that they continue to run," Miller said.

Some of Miller's past Sullivan runners also joined the cross-country teams at Fallbrook High School and at Mission Vista High School.

Miller was born and raised in Fallbrook. She not only won the sixth-grade girls mile race at the Don Dornon games in 1987 but set a meet record with her time of 6:04. Miller had previously been involved in swimming and had taken up running as part of youth triathlon competition, but her Don Dornon Games success was the factor which caused her to focus on running.

At Fallbrook High, Miller was the Warriors' second or third finisher in cross country.

She subsequently ran cross-country and track for the University of California Riverside. She lived in Maryland for 14 years before returning to Fallbrook and began teaching at Sullivan Middle School in 2014.

Miller teaches sixth-grade math and science. During her first year at Sullivan she also taught two periods of physical education, which helped her identify runners for the Don Dornon Games.

She founded Sullivan's cross-country team in 2015.

Author Bio

Joe Naiman, Writer

Joe Naiman has been writing for the Village News since 2001

 

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