A state track-and-field champion from Santa Barbara comes along about as often as a winner of horse racing’s Triple Crown. Since the first state high school meet in 1913, only 11 area athletes have stood at the top of the podium. The latest is San Marcos sophomore Erica Schroeder, who won the girls’ 800 meters last Saturday at the Buchanan High track in Clovis.
She did not do it American Pharoah–style, coming in as a favorite and running away with it. In Friday’s heats, she barely squeaked into the final as the 12th-fastest qualifier. A handicapper would have pegged her as the longest shot in the race. When two girls fell out — disqualified for a false start and for cutting off another runner in a second unsuccessful start — Schroeder still had to race nine girls who had run faster than she ever had. But the odds did not faze her, and neither did the tension at the starting line.
If there is a racehorse whose style Schroeder emulated, it was Silky Sullivan, who in the late ’50s electrified crowds with his finishing speed. He would make other horses appear to stand still as he blazed from last place to first. His fans called him “Mr. Heart Attack.” It’s a good thing Schroeder’s family and friends are in good shape, because she made them crazily excited. She was in ninth place as she followed the leaders in the second of two circuits around the track, but as her rivals labored down the stretch with muscle fatigue, the 10th-grader powered past them to win in 2:07.08, her best time by two seconds and the fastest in the state this year.