Shin Splints

In soccer, players live on their legs. Until recently, Drew Rhodes' legs had been just killing him. Rhodes scored the game's only goal Friday as Unionville improved to 5-0 in the Southern Chester County League (7-1-1 overall) by nipping visiting Garnet Valley, 1-0. Unionville coach Lee Krug sees Rhodes as becoming "more and more the centerman of our attack. " But Rhodes is just happy to be playing relatively free of pain. Since fall, Rhodes has suffered from a severe case of shin splints.

Nate Miller looked up, and Murad Campbell was gone. The scenario wasn't that unusual, except that usually Campbell, Overbrook's star cross-country runner, pulls away from the Highland senior. This time, Campbell just pulled up. About midway through yesterday's Camden County championships on the 3.1-mile course at Gloucester County College, Campbell was overcome by pain from shin splints and left the race. Miller went on to win his first major event and become the first runner this season to beat Campbell, who was ninth in last year's Foot Locker national championship.

Monica Seles, who withdrew from Wimbledon and the Federation Cup this summer, was told by the International Tennis Federation yesterday that she has been banned from the 1992 Summer Olympics. According to the ITF, by "failing to make herself available to represent her country in the 1991 Federation Cup," Seles made herself ineligible for an Olympic nomination by her country of citizenship, Yugoslavia. Seles withdrew from the Federation Cup two days before it was scheduled to start last month in Nottingham, England, claiming she was suffering from shin splints.

Monica Seles feels wronged. Again. Seles, the world's top-ranked female tennis player, was fined $20,000 by the Women's Tennis Association Tuesday for planning to play in an exhibition later this week in the Canary Islands while a Kraft General Foods Tour event is under way in Brighton, England. Fines of $10,000 were levied against Arantxa Sanchez Vicario and Helena Sukova. Nine other players were fined lesser amounts. On a telephone conference call yesterday aimed at promoting her appearance in the Virginia Slims of Philadelphia tournament Nov. 11 to 17 at the Civic Center, Seles said she was surprised by the fine.

Ivan Lendl, ranked No. 3 in the world, was seeded No. 1, and defending champion Pete Sampras was seeded No. 2 yesterday when the draw was made for the $1 million 1991 U.S. Pro Indoor Tennis Championships, which begin Monday at the Spectrum. Brad Gilbert was seeded third. Four-time champion John McEnroe will be the No. 4 seed, and his brother Patrick, an Australian Open semifinalist last month, will be seeded 16th in the 48-man field. The brothers could meet in the semifinals next Saturday.

Murad Campbell figures to get to school on time tomorrow morning. Last season, the Overbrook star missed the team bus to the NJSIAA state cross-country championships, and just made it to the starting line on time. His lack of preparation time cost him what should have been an easy victory. With only 10 minutes to warm up before the Group 4 race, Campbell faded and finished second, behind Hunterdon Central's Jon Fusalo. However, things again will not be perfect for Campbell as he joins the best runners in the state at Holmdel Park for tomorrow's group championships.

This is the final time Council Rock's Brooke Deacon will compete in the Penn Relays as a high school athlete, and she's pumped. The Indians senior will be competing for East Tennessee next season, but she has some business to take care of Thursday in the long jump. She has jumped more than 18 feet indoors and set the school outdoor record of 17-10 1/2 in a meet at Pennsbury earlier this season. She'll be looking to break that 18-foot barrier at Franklin Field. "Brooke is psyched," Council Rock coach Steve Harnish said.

Nothing frustrates an athlete more than unrelenting pain that has no detectable cause. Autumn seems to invite it, because those who refused to exercise in the sweaty days of summer suddenly resolve to get back into shape. But no matter what the season, you may be familiar with the scenario: Your shin aches incessantly after you exercise; you tolerate it for a while, but finally make an appointment with your doctor; your doctor takes X-rays, but no fractured or broken bones show up, and you limp home, dejected and confused.

A little pain isn't about to stop Unionville's Marcia Haradon. The Indians' junior has been hampered by painful shin splints, but that's nothing new for her. "This is the third straight year I've had them," Haradon said. "I just try and ignore them and keep jumping. " On Friday, in a dual meet against Oxford, Haradon won the high jump (5 feet, 1 inch), long jump (15-5 1/2) and triple jump (32-9 3/4) to lead the Indians to a 103-38 victory. "That's getting to be her routine, winning all three," coach Warren Jarrett said.

Making the draw for a tennis tournament consists of methodically placing the seeded players in order, then picking the names of the remaining players out of a bowl and filling in the blanks. Since the seeds are figured by computer rankings, Ivan Lendl (No. 3 in the world) and U.S. Open champion Pete Sampras (No. 5) topped the seedings yesterday for the $1 million U.S. Pro Indoor that begins Monday at the Spectrum. Brad Gilbert is the No. 3 seed and that old favorite, four-time U.S. Pro Indoor titlist John McEnroe, is No. 4. After the draw for the 48-player singles field was finalized at the Market Street Live restaurant, attention focused on the lower half of the draw.

Two competitors died in the Philadelphia long-distance races Sunday, and perhaps it's time to raise this serious question about marathons: Why? After all, human beings were not built to go 26.2 miles at a clip. You want to jog on a treadmill? Fine. You want to do four laps around the high school track? Fine. But if you feel compelled to run on asphalt for three-plus hours, pushing your body to the brink of catatonia, you really ought to consider therapy. I don't get it. Exactly what point is being made by emulating the suicide of a Greek messenger 2,500 years ago?

Part of the appeal of running is its simplicity. Alas, that very quality seems to foster the urge to complicate. Hence the profusion of overengineered running shoes and sophisticated training schemes. So the publication last year of Born to Run , Christopher McDougall's rollicking best seller that makes the case for running barefoot and argues that high-tech running shoes may be causing more harm than good, was welcomed by many who believe that less is more. Across the land, thousands have shed their Nikes and Asics and begun jogging and running unshod.

Last year, Patrick Cheriuyot finished the Blue Cross Broad Street Run in well under an hour at 45:14, the best 10-mile time ever recorded in the United States. World-class athlete Catherine Ndereba set the women's record in 1999, clocking 53:07. Many of the 18,000 competing in this year's race on Sunday will look to erase those times. Lori Nudy has a more modest goal. The 35-year-old real estate agent wants to simply cross the finish line. Within three hours, maybe 2 1/2, if luck's on her side.

Dana Ebbecke was not around when Al Angelo was leading Frankford High to Public League football championships in record-setting fashion. But Ebbecke, a defender for Northeast's soccer squad, is able to get advice from the legendary coach. That's because the senior is Angelo's granddaughter. She spent last summer at the Jersey Shore with Angelo, who resides in Seaville, N.J. Angelo coached Frankford for 21 seasons (1965 to 1984, and 1987), guiding the Pioneers to a 184-39-5 record.

He wasn't healthy enough to race, but running was his only escape. Sean McLaughlin, a Cherokee junior, ran with an Achilles' tendon problem last fall, but missed the indoor and outdoor track seasons because of lingering problems in his ankles and knees. "It was really frustrating," said McLaughlin, who had hoped that by skipping the winter season he would be ready to run in the spring. "I went to every meet and watched. We have a good class [at Cherokee], and to see all them run, I knew I could be right there with them.

Bryan Skelly could have gotten frustrated last year. He could have tired of watching the same two runners pull away from him in each race. He could have given up the chase. But Skelly, then a junior at Washington Township, never got discouraged with all of his third-place finishes. "I went into every race knowing that third was like winning," he said. With his confidence still intact, Skelly made the most of following Highland's Nate Miller, who went on to win the state Meet of Champions, and Overbrook's Murad Campbell, perhaps South Jersey's most accomplished distance runner.

Their names won't be in many game stories, if any. How they perform, though, will dictate the level of success of those who get the headlines and play a large role in the success of the team. Ryan Mea is one of those players. The senior isn't in it for the glory. If glory were Mea's primary motivation, he wouldn't have played center. No, it was more for fulfillment. Mea persevered through most of his sophomore season at Interboro with two broken legs because he had worked so hard to make varsity.

Moorestown swept and celebrated like the Cherokee boys did last season. The Chiefs repeated and barely smiled. In a generally disappointing day of racing for South Jersey runners at the NJSIAA group championships, which included Overbrook star Murad Campbell pulling out early in the Group 4 race, the Moorestown boys' and girls' teams saved the day for the southern part of the state, winning Group 2 titles yesterday on Holmdel Park's treacherous 3.1-mile...

Murad Campbell figures to get to school on time tomorrow morning. Last season, the Overbrook star missed the team bus to the NJSIAA state cross-country championships, and just made it to the starting line on time. His lack of preparation time cost him what should have been an easy victory. With only 10 minutes to warm up before the Group 4 race, Campbell faded and finished second, behind Hunterdon Central's Jon Fusalo. However, things again will not be perfect for Campbell as he joins the best runners in the state at Holmdel Park for tomorrow's group championships.

The numbers say that it will be tough for Williamstown senior Jesse McDonald to qualify for the Meet of Champions cross-country race. But McDonald says forget about the numbers - he will be competing in the final race of the season. "It'll happen," said McDonald, who won the Tri-County Conference individual title Wednesday. "It's got to. There's no choice. If I'm going to run at this level, I have to make it. " The confident McDonald finished fourth in the South Jersey Group 3 meet.