Mission Viejo’s Triple Threat : Track and field: Fager, Dunn and Axtell lead a strong girls’ team that will defend title in Saturday’s county meet.

MISSION VIEJO —  The Future Farmer of America wants to hop, skip and jump 40 feet or farther.

The bodybuilder-to-be is looking for a victory over her Samoan rival.

And the Stanford-bound student with the 4.64 grade-point average says she hopes to long jump 19 feet--a matter that for her is, well, purely academic.

Lisa Fager, Kristin Dunn and Allison Axtell--team captains and team leaders of the Mission Viejo High School girls’ track and field team--have set high goals for Saturday’s Orange County Championships at Rancho Santiago College.

Their foremost hope, though, is that their efforts will boost Mission Viejo, the two-time defending county champion, to its third county title.

Of the 45 teams that will compete Saturday, Woodbridge is considered by many to have the best chance upsetting the Diablos. This is a notion Fager, Dunn and Axtell do not take lightly.

“If we’re going to beat Woodbridge,” Axtell said, “It’ll be in our field events.”

Fager, a triple and high jumper, Dunn, a shotputter, and Axtell, a long jumper, have been members of the varsity for four years. Each now leads the county in at least one event.

Fager, who set the county triple jump record (39 feet 11 1/2 inches) at this meet last year, has a season best of 39-9. Her aim Saturday is to break the 40-foot barrier in the triple jump, and to better her high jump best (5-7) by two inches.

Fager, a member of the Future Farmers of America and the 4-H club, will attend Kansas State next fall and plans to study veterinary medicine.

Last week, Fager, who spends two to three hours a day caring for a duck, a lamb, three chickens and a horse at the Mission Viejo agriculture farm, had to stay up all night with a sick lamb, feeding the animal Milk of Magnesia and yogurt.

Caring for the animals, Fager said, helps relieve the pressures from track.

“I put so much pressure on myself it’s unbelievable,” said Fager, who had a 4.2 grade-point average last semester.

“By the end of last track season, I was just wishing it would end. During the summer, I didn’t think of track once. I didn’t do track--I didn’t even let anyone talk about track. Now I have a different attitude. I’m really relaxed and looking forward to the meets.”

Dunn, a team captain for three years, has a county-leading mark of 42-1 in the shotput, and is among the leaders in the discus at 128-7.

This weekend, she hopes to win her first county title. In the shotput, Joanna Alo of Santa Ana Valley, one of four Samoan shot-putters on the Falcon team, should be Dunn’s toughest competition.

“I’ve been up against Joanna a couple times, and we’ve been relatively even,” Dunn said. “I think we have a good matchup; we’ve been waiting for this all year. This is what I want. It’s really important to me.”

Dunn, who said she started a weightlifting program in seventh grade--”I was very heavy, really heavy as a child, and training helped me look better and feel better about myself,”--now spends about three hours a day lifting weights under the guidance of Geoffrey Ricchio, an El Toro chiropractor.

In about three years, Dunn plans to compete in bodybuilding. Earlier this week, she tried wrestling. Her reward? A twisted left ankle, now swollen black and blue. “It’s my drive leg, but it’ll be OK,” she said.

Axtell, who won the long jump at this meet last year, shares the county lead in that event (18-2 1/2) with Santa Ana Valley’s Brenda Robinson.

An age-group competitor since the fifth grade, Axtell was the first member of the Mission Viejo-based Time Machine, a youth track and field team affiliated with The Athletics Congress. She said her age-group coach did not allow her to long jump. “He said it wasn’t my event,” Axtell said.

That changed when she became a freshman at Mission Viejo.

“I guess you usually like the things you’re good at,” said Axtell, who will compete for Stanford next year. “Throwing myself into a pit is fun for me, I guess.”

Unlike Fager and Dunn, Axtell also competes in track events, specifically the 400-meter dash and the 1,600-meter relay. In the 400 Saturday, Axtell will line up in Lane 4, with longtime rival Kaci Keffer of Woodbridge in Lane 5.

“Kaci and I have been competing against each other since we were freshmen,” Axtell said. “She goes out really fast, so I need that inside lane. . . .

“I keep envisioning myself coming off the last turn with Keffer and just fighting until the end. Usually I don’t like the 400 but for some reason I’m real excited about this one.”

Whatever happens Saturday, or for the remainder of the season, Mission Viejo Coach Fred Almond said the three seniors will be remembered most at the school as models of hard work and dedication.

“One of the reasons why they continue to be so good is they work so hard,” Almond said. “They aren’t God’s gift to the track world--they’re just hard-working kids.”