THE FRONT ROW with Jason Elliott, June 19, 2013

For former Coeur d'Alene High hurdler Morgan Struble, her shot at joining the U.S. Junior National team starts Thursday.

Struble, who signed with the University of Hawaii during her senior year of high school, qualified for the USA Junior Outdoor Track and Field Championships starting Thursday in Des Moines, Iowa, with her time in the 400-meter hurdles at the Big West Conference Championships.

FOLLOWING THE season, Struble was released from her scholarship from Hawaii, and has now signed with Arizona starting in the fall.

As a senior at Coeur d'Alene, Struble qualified for the USA Juniors meet in the 300 meter hurdles with her time at the state 5A meet (43.40 seconds), but opted not to compete.

"I wanted to take a break in track before I hit it really hard in college," Struble said. "I just figured I'd take the summer off."

In the Big West meet at Cal State Northridge on May 11, Struble finished seventh in the 400 hurdles in 1:02.01. That time was good enough to qualify her for the USA Junior meet, which is for athletes age 18-20.

"It's been fun," Struble said. "It was a nice change and cool to see a different culture and environment, but it made the training a lot tougher with the humidity and hot weather. Where the weather is always cold here, the hot weather made it difficult there too. But overall, it was a cool, good experience."

Leaving the Hawaii program wasn't an easy decision.

"It was hard," said Struble, who transferred to Coeur d'Alene prior to her junior year from Big Sky High in Missoula. "I made a lot of good friends over there and it was like paradise. But it was also being so far away from home, so it's nice to be back on the mainland. Arizona has a major that I'm really interested in called mining and geological engineering.

I want to go into the petroleum business, and they offer a really good major for that."

STRUBLE HAS been training at the track at Coeur d'Alene High with her high school coach, Linda Lanker, who will coach the USA hurdles team for the Pan American Games this summer. Preliminaries for the hurdles at the USA Juniors are Friday afternoon, with semifinals on Saturday and finals on Sunday.

"She's gotten stronger from her weightlifting and getting used to the cold weather again," Lanker said. "But she's ready to go. She's stronger now than she's been the last month with having a chance to work out and get ready."

The top three in the event advance to the Pan Am Junior Championships Aug. 23-25 in Medellin, Columbia. Lanker is also coaching the USA hurdlers in that meet.

"I'm really excited," Lanker said. "I've got some crazy good competition, but they're girls that I've seen during the season. It's fun and cool that we're all at the peak of our age group. It would be crazy to make the U.S. team and it would be a lot more training. To get to travel to a different country for track would be crazy - but I'd really have to drop some seconds to get there."

Lanker said that the target time is 1-minute flat.

"It makes such a difference with being in college and having a chance to do this," Lanker said. "She didn't do it last year, but my whole motivation for getting her to do this is that it's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. She gets to have this experience and the coaches from Arizona will be there. It will be a great overall experience having her there and see how the big time works."

For Struble, 19, it is her final chance to qualify for the junior national team.

"This is her shot," Lanker said. "It works out great and if she advances, I'll be coaching her with the Pan American team. I'm excited about that and how fun would that be if she made it. Even the experience will help her out."

Jason Elliott is a sports writer for the Coeur d'Alene Press. He can be reached by telephone at 664-8176, Ext. 2020 or via email at jelliott@cdapress.com.