Kim Bryan has provided senior leadershp for Oak Park track all year

Acorn Sports Writer


Kim Bryan

Kim Bryan

If Kim Bryan wasn’t supposed to finish in the top three of last Friday’s 1600-meter race in the Tri-Valley championships in Carpinteria, it was news to her. Bryan has made it a habit to transcend expectations.


The Oak Park senior was the second leading scorer on the first Eagle team to ever win a California Interscholastic Federation (CIF) title in basketball. She was one of only two seniors with Alexis Stiny.


The Eagles were 4-18 when Bryan played varsity as a freshman. There was no reason to believe that things would improve as drastically as they did, but Bryan and Stiny hung around just in case.


After a junior season in which Oak Park was one game away from the CIF finals and Long Beach State’s arena at The Pyramid, the payoff was exactly what Bryan and her teammates envisioned this year: The Pryramid, the CIF finals and a championship under Coach Lindsay Strothers.


And to think, Bryan didn’t play organized basketball until eighth grade.


"It was amazing," Bryan says of the ride to a CIF championship. "I wanted it so badly, especially because it was my senior year. And our whole goal from the beginning was to get to The Pyramid. Last year we just missed it."


With Stiny sidelined due to a back injury, Bryan was the senior leader on the court for an Eagle team that featured three juniors: leading scorer Michelle Bregar, Holly Stewart and Jannel Buckley, as well as two clutch freshmen, Jamie Rauchwarger and Shir Raanan.


"Freshman year, when we only won four games, no one would come to our games," Bryan said, reflecting back on the empty seats in the Oak Park gym. "We’d always see the boys’ basketball games and they’d have big crowds. We said, ‘That would be nice.’


"And then this year it finally happened," Bryan added. "I can’t believe how many people came to our games. I never would have expected it. People would see my parents and say ‘Congratulations.’"


In the CIF finals in basketball, Bryan made six three-point shots at the Pyramid. Now, in track, she has again saved some of her best performances for late in the season.


Along with taking the unexpected third place in the 1600 meter run in the Tri-Valley finals, she ran in the 3200 meters, a race she usually doesn’t run. The idea wasn’t to have her win or even score points by placing in the top three.


Oak Park’s track coaches, Kevin Smith and assistant J.J. Castner, just wanted Bryan on the track to inspire freshmen Hailey Swartz and Ali Banks, both of whom had the potential to qualify for CIFs.


"I think the best thing I can say about Kim," said Castner, who works closely with Bryan, "what defines her most as an athlete, is that when it really counts, she knows how to step her game up, and really get out there and compete at a championship level. She knows how to win when it counts."


Bryan qualified for the mile (1600) in CIF for the fourth time in her career with her performance last week at Carpinteria, but as important to her teammates and coaches was her motivating influence on the younger Eagle athletes.


"In the two-mile, we were trying to get both Ali Banks and Hailey Schwartz qualified with at-larger times," Castner said. "And I put Kim in there because I knew she’d push them. And she was yelling at them in the race, barking orders, ‘Get up here,’ and ‘Take the lead, let’s go.’"


Both Swartz and Banks notched times that qualified them for the two-mile CIF prelims this Saturday.


"It’s just that type of leadership and character that’s hopefully going to lead the cross country and the track team in a new direction for the girls, hopefully to match the guys," Castner added. "Kim’s invaluable and she’ll be missed."


Bryan will attend UC Santa Barbara, in part to stay close to her sister, Kristin, a junior at Oak Park and her brother, Sean, a seventh grader who’ll someday attend Oak Park as well.


"I’m very close with them, so I’m going to miss them," she said. "But we’ll stay in contact. I’ll see them a lot. And my teammates are great in all my sports—my basketball team is very close knit, we’re very good friends—it’s going to be hard to leave.


"And cross country and track, we have a lot of younger girls, freshmen and sophomores," Bryan said. "We’ve all become really close. But I’ll come back and see everyone play and run."




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