ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, May 25, 1996 TAG: 9605280010
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV4 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
TYPE: COMMENTARY
SOURCE: RAY COX
This is one year in which events have proceeded at a delightful pace for Crystal Moles.
After making herself at home at Auburn High following a transfer from Christiansburg, she had a mega-magnificent season in girls' basketball, scoring close to 20 points per game while gracefully uncoiling her 6-foot frame en route to 11 rebounds an outing. She signed to hoop it up for Longwood College, which made her and presumably other members of the Lancers community ecstatic and representatives of the rest of the colleges that recruited her melancholy.
She made the honorary Group A volleyball all-state team, which would have been more widely known had it dawned on the coaches who vote on the team members to release the names of said members to an institution equipped to distribute such a roster to a wider audience. The newspaper might have served the purpose.
Although widespread notoriety may have eluded her, overwhelming happiness has not.
``It's been an awesome year,'' she said recently during a springtime afternoon that seemed to match her mood. ``This has been the best year of my life all around. Lots of friends. Good times. It's just been great.''
As she was saying this, she absent-mindedly adjusted an over (boy)-sized class ring that has been modified for her more slender finger by white tape, a further symbol of the strong bonds she has forged in a new scholastic home.
With the sun shining, the birds chirping, the cows mooing down on the dairy farm, and graduation drawing nigh, Moles would have had every motivation this spring to be unmotivated. It is a common affliction known in some quarters as senioritis and in other, less-civil, precincts as no-count, but is otherwise generally accepted as a fact of high school life.
Moles was having none of it, though. She thus volunteered as a runner and jumper for the Eagles' track team. There were certain obstacles to her candidacy for the squad (the primary one being that she hadn't participated in the sport since the middle of her freshman season at Christiansburg), but neither she nor her coach-to-be, Sherry Akers, seemed to pay any of that much mind.
Moles dabbled in the long jump, springing to a height of 5 feet, 2 inches in practice. It was an elevation, incidentally, that would have won the Group AA Region IV crown last week. She ran the 400 meters some, but found her true love was the 800, a race that, to be frank about it, doesn't often prompt dewy-eyed testimonials from its participants.
``I like the 800,'' she said. ``It's not like a sprinting race, like the 400. In the 800, you start the race in a sprint then you settle back with the rest of the runners and hope you can stay close enough to be in a position to win when the time comes.''
Moles has been in such a position in each of the four races of that length she has run this season. At the Group A Region C meet last week, she blazed home in 2 minutes, 26.4 seconds to win the race and beat the defending champion, fifth-place Charlee Taylor of Radford, while eclipsing Taylor's meet record by four-tenths of a second.
Moles was as gracious in victory as she was swift of foot.
``I knew Charlee was the one to beat,'' Moles said. ``She's a great runner, but I think maybe she was a little tired after running in the 1,600.''
Moles may have astounded some spectators with this sizzling performance on Glenvar High's frying pan of a track that day, but her coach was not among them.
``I told Crystal last week that she doesn't really know what she's capable of,'' Akers said.
Moles does now, but don't expect her to be making any grandiose plans for the state meet today at the University of Virginia. The year as been amply spectacular no matter what happens in Charlottesville.
``I'm going to go up there to have fun running in the state meet and to do my best,'' she said. ``This is my senior year. I want memories to look back on.''
If that involves looking back at the rest of the panting pack as she crosses the finish line in the last 800-meter footrace of her high school career, so be it.
LENGTH: Medium: 78 linesby CNB