Cummings like a Tiger for Corona del Mar

If you’re watching her run at a track meet, there are two ways to pick out Sarah Cummings:

No. 1: If she’s not first, she’ll be at the front of the pack.

No. 2: It’s impossible to miss the mop of curly bright red hair pulled into a ponytail, especially when she’s surrounded by her three blonde teammates.

Cummings, a Princeton-bound senior at Corona del Mar High, will be running the 3,200 meters event at the CIF Southern Section Masters Meet this Friday at Cerritos College.

It’s an accomplishment that seemed incredibly far away when she suffered a stress fracture in her left foot last year at the Trabuco Hills Invitational.

“When it first happened, I couldn’t walk on it,” Cummings said. “It was really inflamed and swollen and then it progressed. But at first it was unbearable.”

Now Cummings is running with no problem, and last weekend she won the CIF Southern Section Division III title in the 3,200 meters with a time of 10 minutes, 45 seconds.

“I was really excited,” Cummings said. “I was a little worried going in. I had three races on that day, and I was worried about still having enough gas in the tank for two-mile, but that wasn’t an issue, and everything worked out well.”

She was still recovering at the beginning of this season, and missed four dual meets and the Irvine invitational because of soft tissue damage she suffered when she broke her metatarsal bone. But that injury, Cummings said, is now just a past blip on an old radar screen.

To know Cummings is to know that she attacks her goals with a laser-like focus that doesn’t let up until she gets the desired result.

“She’s really great at everything she does,” said her younger sister Marissa, a freshman on the track team. “If she puts her mind to something, then she’s going to be good at it. You can almost guarantee it.”

She’s neat without being obsessively compulsive, and smart without being off-putting. When Cummings returned from a recruiting visit to Princeton, she knew it was where she wanted to spend her college career.

Her visits to Duke and Harvard were just bookends to her time at Princeton, and Cummings guiltily admitted that she visited Harvard knowing full well it wasn’t where her heart was.

“When I went to Princeton, I knew it was the right place for me,” Cummings said. “I liked the girls and the coach.”

It helps that Cummings lived in Whitehouse Station, N.J. — about 45 minutes from Princeton — until her father, Don, a bond and portfolio manager, relocated the family because of his job. They moved to California right before she started eighth grade, and Cummings is looking forward to running in front of relatives and old friends at her Princeton meets.

Cummings, like her father, is a math person — she wants to study economics — but her mother can take full credit for the red hair.

“She’s a great role model,” Marissa said. “She’s a great example. That’s what I strive to be like when I’m her age, and it’s really fun.”

SORAYA NADIA McDONALD may be reached at (714) 966-4613 or [email protected].