By Ed Piper
"She worked in the principal's office" while a student, remembers Chuck Boyer of senior Janice Wiser, the La Jolla High sprinter who holds the number-two 400-meter time in the San Diego Section of 53.53. In 1974, "We asked her to run the 100-yard dash." In the state meet in Bakersfield, Wiser swept the 100 and 220.
"She felt bad she hadn't also run the 440, then La Jolla could have won the Division 2 championship," says Boyer, who was in the spring of his first year of teaching math at La Jolla. He retired 30 years later in 2005.
Running all three events in one day would have been an enormous task at that time. There were no prelims the day before to qualify in. However, Wiser was used to competing in all three events in AAU--non-school--meets.
The rub was that recruited for the league finals, then moving on to sweep her two main events in the section meet a week later, other coaches and athletes complained that she had come out of nowhere and hadn't run in dual meets during the season.
At the time, with Title IX having just been handed down in 1972, the Vikings fielded a boys track team, but no girls team. Janice ran for a private club apart from the school.
Later in the summer of '74, Wiser ran the 400 meters in 53.53, which stands second only to Monique Henderson of Morse in San Diego Section records. Payton Smith of La Jolla, a junior, ranks third in 53.86.
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