Her track season was just getting started when Newport Harbor senior Keaton Robar noticed something wasn’t quite right.
Robar, who has the ability to excel at any race from 200 meters to 5,000 meters, began experiencing pain in her left thigh in late February.
“It felt like muscle fatigue,” Robar said Monday. “Or some sort of knot that needed to be stretched. And then over the next couple of weeks the pain grew, then every step I took was painful and so I started thinking ‘maybe this is something more.’”
It was. An MRI revealed that fluid had accumulated in the bone marrow of Robar’s left femur. Technically that is called “bone marrow edema.”
The cure for that is rest.
So Robar, last season’s Orange County girls track and field athlete of the year and one of the county’s top cross country runners this past fall, had to sit out for several weeks.
Newport Harbor’s Keaton Robar paces herself during the 104th CIF State Track and Field Championships at Veterans Memorial Stadium on the campus of Buchanan High School in Clovis on Friday, May 24 2024. (Photo by Joseph Vasquez, Contributing Photographer)
When activity resumed, Robar engaged in plenty of cross training, incorporating biking and swimming.
Her competition comeback began April 16 in a Sunset League three-way meet with Corona del Mar and Los Alamitos.
Robar ran in the 200 and the 400 on her home track at Newport Harbor High. She finished eighth in the 200, her first-ever 200 in high school track, at 27.88 seconds. The 400, more conducive to Robar’s running history but still a rare event for her, was a better result – a second-place finish at 1 minute, 00.35 seconds.
Baby steps, by her standards.
This past weekend, in the Sunset League prelims and finals, Robar competed in her familiar 800. She finished second in the 800 prelims at 2:19.65. In the league finals Robar won the 800 at 2:15.93.
That league finals time was not close to her personal best of 2:07.01 in last year’s CIF Southern Section Masters Meet, or the 2:07.40 she ran to finish third in the CIF State Championships. And that time was 10th best in Orange County this season behind a talented group led by JSerra senior Anne Elise Packard’s 2:07.72. Although Robar said she “is not as aerobically there as in past seasons,” her league finals results did elevate her psyche.
“That was a confidence boost,” she said. “Getting back out there and running, and qualifying for CIF, at the least.”
CIF-SS track and field prelims are Saturday. Robar and Newport Harbor, with multi-event standout Natalie McCarty and 3,200 league champion Marley McCullough also leading the Sailors, will be in the CIF-SS Division 2 prelims at Ontario High School. The CIF-SS finals for all four divisions are at Moorpark High on May 17.
Newport Harbor track and field coach Haley Bates said Robar is progressing as anticipated.
“As long as she’s staying mentally confident and locked in,” Bates said. “We’ve stressed to her that we’re right where we need to be. We’re still on par for hitting all of our goals.”
NOTES
Our weather has turned rottenly hot just in time for Saturday’s CIF-SS track and field prelims, with its four divisions held at different locations. Division 1 prelims are at Trabuco Hills High, Division 2 at Ontario High, Division 3 at Yorba Linda High and Division 4 at Carpinteria High. The finals are May 17 at Moorpark High, followed by the CIF-SS Masters Meet (May 24), which is the CIF State qualifying meet, and the CIF State Championships on May 30 and 31 at Buchanan High in Clovis. …
When Nate Klitzing left Crean Lutheran boys basketball to become the coach at his alma mater Orange Lutheran, Crean Lutheran quickly promoted Austin Loeb to head coach. Loeb was an assistant to Klitzing for seven years, including during the Saints’ 2020-21 CIF championship season. …
Matt Moorhouse, who coached Santiago boys basketball to the CIF-SS Division 4AA championship this past season, announced last week that he has resigned so that he can be an assistant coach at Crean Lutheran. …
Huntington Beach’s baseball team won its eighth straight league championship when the Oilers clinched the Sunset League title last week. …
Aliso Niguel senior shortstop/pitcher Cooper Flemming is batting .432 (35 hits in 81 at-bats) with six home runs, seven doubles, three triples and 27 RBIs in 27 games. On the mound he is 8-1 with a 0.65 ERA and 57 strikeouts with only seven walks in 43 innings pitched. Flemming signed with Vanderbilt and is projected to be an early-round selection in the MLB Draft that will be held July 13-15. …
Eleven Orange County boys volleyball teams advanced to Saturday’s CIF-SS semifinals: Mater Dei and St. Margaret’s in Division 2; Orange Lutheran and Tesoro in Division 3; Crean and Sage Hill in Division 4 (they play each other at Sage Hill); Esperanza and Kennedy in Division 5; El Toro in Division 6; Brea Olinda in Division 7; and Katella in Division 8. …
Huntington Beach’s boys volleyball team has secured a berth in the Division 1 final, regardless of the outcome of its pool-play match against Loyola at home on Friday. Corona del Mar plays at Mira Costa on Friday in the final round of pool play in Pool A. The winner advances to the Division 1 final that will be played at Cerritos College on May 16 or 17. …
The Servite golf team did not qualify for the CIF-SS team championships because of the method used these days to place teams into playoff divisions. Servite tied Santa Margarita for the Trinity League championship, but through tiebreaker criteria is the league’s No. 2 team and only a league’s No. 1 team is an automatic qualifier for the CIF-SS team golf championship. In the computer power rankings of CIF-SS teams, Servite is No. 21. Division 1 is a 20-team group, which puts Servite in Division 2, but by CIF-SS rules, no division can start with a non-automatic qualifier as its No. 1 seed so Servite is not in the CIF-SS team golf playoffs. …
The top college football recruit in Orange County might be Servite tight end Luke Sorensen (6-4, 245), who will be a senior in the fall. He has recruiting trips this month to, in order, UCLA, Nebraska and Penn State. Sorensen has offers from just about every college program that feels it has a chance to get him, including Alabama, Arizona, Arizona State, Auburn – and those are just the schools that start with the letter “A.”