Glusac, Noon honored as top 50 CIF-SDS athletes

The California Interscholastic Federation’s San Diego Section is celebrating its 50th anniversary, and the selection of the top 50 athletes of all time from the first 50 San Diego Section seasons included Fallbrook High School graduates Brent Noon and Milena Glusac.

Noon, who graduated from Fallbrook High School in 1990, was a shot putter and discus thrower on Fallbrook’s boys track and field team. Glusac, a 1993 graduate, was on the girls cross-country team and was a distance runner on the track and field team. A media panel selected the top 50 athletes in the San Diego Section’s history.

“I was really honored to be on that list,” Glusac said.

Glusac, who now lives in Encinitas, was present both at the Nov. 9 press conference when the top 50 athletes were announced and at the Dec. 6 public ceremony at Qualcomm Stadium. Noon, who currently lives in Georgia, was not present at either event.

“There were some amazing athletes,” Glusac said of the ceremony. “It was quite an honor.”

Noon won four CIF San Diego Section shot put championships, three CIF San Diego Section discus championships, and two CIF state shot put titles. He still holds the CIF San Diego Section shot put record both for the CIF meet at 74 feet 10 1/2 inches and for any section meet with a throw of 76 feet 2 inches.

In 1989 his first-place shot put and discus throws helped Fallbrook win its only boys track and field CIF championship; the Warriors bettered Orange Glen for first place by a single point. Noon’s 1989 shot put throw of 66 feet 7 inches also erased the previous CIF San Diego Section meet record of 63’11” set by George Brown of Granite Hills in 1967 and matched by Pete Schmock of San Dieguito in 1968 (Schmock also had a throw of 63’11” at the state meet that year, making him the San Diego Section’s first state champion in that event). Noon’s 1989 discus throw of 185’4” broke the CIF meet record of 182’5” set in 1976 by Mark Malone of El Cajon High School (who was the San Diego Chargers’ starting quarterback during Noon’s junior year). Noon improved his discus record to 189’9” in the 1990 meet; that mark lasted until Dan Ames of El Capitan threw the discus 192’0” in 1999.

The cross-country classifications placed Fallbrook in Class 2A, Division II, and Division I during Glusac’s years with the Warriors, but she won CIF San Diego Section championships in all four of her high school seasons and was the state champion as a senior in 1992. During the track and field season she won four 1,600-meter run and four 3,200-meter run championships at the CIF section meets while winning the CIF state championship in the 3,200-meter race in 1992 and taking state titles in both the 1,600-meter and 3,200-meter events as a senior in 1993.

One of Glusac’s most memorable events was the 1993 CIF preliminaries, in which she ran the two distance races prior to her prom that night. Her date, a hurdler on the boys track and field team, had to hold up her dress at the prom. “I had lost so much weight,” she said.

Ironically, Fallbrook was one of the three schools in San Diego County which remained in the CIF Southern Section when the San Diego Section was created in 1960. Thirty-three of the county’s 36 schools joined the San Diego Section, although geographical considerations led Fallbrook to affiliate with a small-school league otherwise consisting of Inland Empire teams and proximity to Imperial County (the Imperial Valley League consisting of Brawley, Calexico, Central, Palo Verde, and El Centro eventually joined the San Diego Section in 1999) caused Mountain Empire and Rancho Del Campo (whose student-inmates were well enough behaved at the time for the school to play road games) to remain in the Southern Section. The opening of additional North County small schools put Fallbrook in the San Diego Section in 1961.

The CIF San Diego Section currently sanctions 28 sports (counting boys and girls sports as separate programs except for badminton, which is co-ed). In its history the CIF San Diego Section has also sanctioned three discontinued sports: boys gymnastics, rifle, and indoor track.

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