LJ track: Wiser enjoyed stability after LJHS

By Ed Piper

Janice Wiser, the only San Diego female athlete to win both sprints--the 100- and 220-yard dashes, in her case--in the CIF State Meet, attended four schools in four years during her dominance in her sport.

That must have required incredible resilience and dexterity, as her coach, Tracy Sundlun, certainly got the best out of the young runner. She ran the 400 meters later in the summer of 1974 in 53.53 seconds, after her dual victories in the CIF meet, still the second-fastest time ever by a San Diego prep runner.

But the toll was great. Wiser had to move from one coast to the other, attending Northwestern High in Hyattsville, Maryland her sophomore year, then moving to San Luis Obispo across the country for her junior year at SLO High, and finally La Jolla High her senior year, when she unleashed her twin wins in Bakersfield without the support of a Vikings girls track team around her.

Janice went on the next year to begin four years running for San Diego State and Coach Mary Alice Hill.

"I didn't have time for extracurricular activities," recalled Wiser in 2020 to a reporter. She was more than occupied with school and AAU club track under Sundlun during her senior year as a Viking.

"I didn't know a lot of people in La Jolla," the former runner told this reporter in an interview Fri., June 27. That was the nature of the beast, as Sundlun, who Janice said "was a great coach" (he also still lives in the San Diego area), convinced her parents to let her go to San Luis Obispo when he took a job at Cal Poly SLO. She lived with a family there while attending high school and running.

Then that quickly turned around to be a move on to La Jolla and her year at LJHS. She graduated from La Jolla High, though the school didn't yet have a girls track team. She worked out with the boys team under Coach Chuck Boyer. Her personal coach, Sundlun, set up a few meets during the spring track season. That led up to winning the San Diego Section meet in three events: the 100, 220, and 440 (all at the yard distances--school track had not yet converted over to the meter distances).

Yet, obviously enjoying the excitement of the success she experienced in running for La Jolla, then SDSU, Wiser landed on her feet and went on to live out a stable, secure existence in San Diego. Just talk with her. She will share that joy. It's not puffed up; it's not about her; but she definitely enjoys talking about her running and her former coach, Sundlun.

She and her future husband, Robert Pope, met in 1973. He was enrolled at UCSD. She had recently enrolled at La Jolla High. "She was 17, I was 18," he stated Thurs., June 26, in an interview prior to Janice's talk with this reporter. They have now been married 49 years, and have two grown children and four grandchildren, whom they adore and whose activities they follow closely: Anthony, 19; Tommy; Robby; and Maya.