Ferris will get an opportunity to represent U.S.

Dylan Ferris didn't run as fast as he would have liked during his freshman year at Stanford.

But Ferris, one year removed from the end of a star-studded high-school career at East Forsyth, had plenty on his plate at one of the nation's top colleges and seems to have digested it well.

"Part of it was adjusting to a new program and to school itself," Ferris, speaking by phone from Palo Alto, Calif., said yesterday in defense of his middle-distance times. "But I had a fun year."

Ferris is due for some fun late this week, too. He has qualified to run the 800 meters for the United States at the Pan American Junior Athletics Championships, scheduled Friday through Sunday in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago. The U.S. team will leave today.

Ferris qualified for the games as an alternate -- he finished third at the U.S. Junior Nationals in Oregon the first week of June. Needing a top-two finish to qualify automatically, he was passed by two runners on the final stretch.

But his disappointment didn't last long.

Ferris said that the third- and fourth-place finishers had to fill out paperwork for the Pan Am Junior Games.

"Scott Hall, the (assistant director of track and field) at Wake Forest is one of the managers of the (Pan Am) team," Ferris said. "He came over and said ‘Dylan, the guy in second declined, so if you want to go, you are in. My coach had already told me to take my season as far as I can."

This weekend's meet will be the second international competition for Ferris, who traveled with Team USA to the IAAF World Youth Track and Field Championships in the Czech Republic in the summer of 2007.

"The experience really helps you when you are going to go for it again," Ferris said. "Racing internationally is similar to racing collegiately. People sit around and wait and see if they are the fastest over the last 100 meters. That's how a lot of international races go, at least in the distances. High school wasn't like that at all.

"When you go from high school, running out front and staying out front and winning, it's different when you get to international stage, and there are four guys that have the same (times). It comes down to how you race, not what history says about how fast you are.

"It really helps going into a championship like this knowing what to expect. Back then, I really had no clue, and I was just running. I didn't know what would happen so much."

Ferris ran a personal-best time of 3:48.46 in the 1,500 meters at the Payton Jordan Invitational at Stanford in early May, finishing fourth, and ran a season-best 1:50.10 in the 800 meters at the Husky Classic in Seattle. He ran his personal best in the 800 meters, 1:49.27, as a junior at East Forsyth.

Ferris has run faster than 1:50 in the 800 each of the past three years but still hasn't topped his best time from 2007. Ferris said he regrets he didn't run faster times as a college freshman, but he also said his intent heading into races is different now.

"The biggest thing now, running collegiately, no one says numbers very much," Ferris said. "You just want to compete with the field. I want to be in the race when it starts, and I want to be in the race when it's finishing. I want to get out and get a comfortable position, go through and be patient and over the last 100 (meters) make a drive for the finish and hope to be the first one there."

Ferris said there would be about 32 entries in the 800 at the Pan Am Games and that the race will have only two rounds. He will need to run one of the fastest eight or nine times in the preliminaries to qualify for the final.

Of course, running cross country and indoor and outdoor track isn't the only thing that Ferris had to keep up with during the last year.

"Academically it was hard, and when I tell people where I go to school, they would expect that," Ferris said. "It is hard, and I had to work, and I also learned what I need to do to be better at it next year. I need to study more. At East, I really didn't have to study that much, but now I am getting my butt kicked, but that's part of figuring it out. I learned some cool stuff and took some interesting classes."

Runningwise, it didn't take Ferris long to acclimate to California weather.

"With my running, it's so much better because I don't have to deal with the humidity," he said. "I was working out last weekend thinking, ‘This is so much better than home.' I like the West Coast a lot. It's expensive, but since I don't own a house or anything, I don't have to worry about it so much."

■ Mason Linker can be reached at 727-7324 or at mlinker@wsjournal.com.