It was a Who's Who of Colorado female high school cross country runners at the start of the Pat Patten Invite on Friday. Kelsey Lakowske, second from lett, sneaked away for the win. Photo by Jeff McCoy.
We're almost down to the state meet in Utah. Only 10 days and counting as of this writing.
That means regional races are in full swing. In Region IV, American Fork's boys dominated as expected. Six of the top nine places went to Cavemen. If anyone takes down American Fork at the state meet, it will rank as an upset of the highest order. Alta won the girls' side of the region going away, but this region is not the stronghold of girls cross country in Utah at the moment.
In Region VII (Note to folks in Utah: this would be a lot easier using Arabic than Roman numerals), Mountain View's boys bolstered their position for an NXN-SW bid by taking five of the top 12 places en route to a 14-point win over Orem for the regional title.
In the girls' race, the news was mainly of an individual nature. Summer Harper (Orem) and Carrie Jube (Timpview) blew out the field and finished 1-2. These two are clearly two of the finest in Utah this season. Like Region IV, however, this one is not the stronghold of top girls' teams in Utah. Timpanogos got by Mountain View for the regional title.
There are still several Utah regional meets yet to be held. Pine View should compete on the 11th, Davis on the 13th, and Ogden on the 13th as well (I believe). That takes care of the ones warranting the closest scrutiny.
There was no shortage of meets in Colorado this past week, but there was a definite shortage of key matchups. With the league meets coming up this week, several Colorado teams were either hunkered down, running moderate efforts, or getting varsity meet experience for runners bidding to become varsity regulars next season.
The Highlands Ranch and Pine Creek girls were scheduled to have a showdown at the Rampart Invitational on Tuesday, but with Heather Bates out of the Pine Creek lineup, it ended up being not much of a contest. Highlands Ranch left town with a 34-point margin of victory.
Spencer Wenck extended his reign of terror over the ranks of Colorado boys by winning the Doherty Spartan Invitational. Once again, Wenck went under 16:00 for 5K, this time on a course with two challenging climbs. There was relatively little of team interest emerging out of the is meet as Cheyenne Mountain was resting most of their regulars.
The biggest meet of the weekend in Colorado was the Pat Amato Classic in Northglenn. While the boys' event didn't turn up many results of regional interest, the girls' race confirmed a suspicion already held by many in the state--Liberty is among the top girls teams in the state. Liberty's girls simply pounded the field. Liberty may have been doing a reasonably effective job of hiding up to this point, but this is now a marked team--as if Colorado needed yet another top-notch girls entry.
Also on Friday, Monarch traveled to the Andy Myers Invitational in Greeley. The course has a lot of asphalt surface and tends to run on the fast side of the spectrum. The hometown girls from Greeley Central put up a decent fight before falling to Monarch, but no boys' teams put up much resistance. Monarch claimed five of the top 11 boys places en route to an easy team title.
Elsewhere, The Classical Academy girls won handily at Falcon, a smallish meet in the Colorado Springs area. And, Arapahoe met up with no meaningful resistance while sweeping the team titles at the Windjammer Invitational in Englewood.
If you haven't heard about a Colorado team in the preceding paragraphs, you can safely figure they were laying low last week. Look for a different set of teams to be laying low this week. Yes, that would imply there are several Colorado teams who choose to de-emphasize their league meets as they prepare for state. The strategy of trying to win them all frequently backfires.
In Arizona, all eyes were on the Doug Conley Invitational. And all eyes saw how strong the Xavier girls program really is. Running a JV lineup, Xavier lost the meet title to Desert Vista by a scant two points. The Xavier varsity girls head out to Mt. SAC this week.
Alhambra won the boys' title, but Desert Vista and Brophy Prep were able to keep it close. The gap between Alhambra and the rest of the boys teams in Arizona seems to be dwindling. That may be a premature read on the situation, but recent trends are seeming to indicate a shrinking margin.
Arizona seems to do a better job of keeping its top teams at the same meet than Colorado does. Whether or not that is a desirable thing is, I suppose, a matter of interpretation.
Like Arizona, New Mexico managed to corral most of its NXN-SW contending teams into the same meet this weekend--the Albuquerque City Meet at Albuquerque Academy HS.
Despite have several of their top boys locked up in classrooms taking the SAT test without access to water bottles, AA still came away with the boys' title. It's doubtful that anyone expected anything different. Maybe they expected the gap between AA and second to be less that 24 - 87, but they were disappointed if they did.
The girls' contest, however, came with a lot of intrigue. Would it be La Cueva, Eldorado, or Albuquerque Academy? Eldorado ended up with a surprisingly dominating win. Even that win, however, has an Albuquerque Academy connection. Teo Cutter, the Eldorado coach, ran for Adam Kedge at AA a few years back. Four of the top 14 individuals was good enough for Cutter's crew to claim a 22-point margin of victory in the team standings. Julia Foster won the girls individual title by 41 seconds. If there's a surprise there, it would be in how small the margin of victory was this weekend.
If a full set of results for the city meet ever appears, I'll try to get them posted with a link to those results from this article.
Elsewhere in New Mexico, Cleveland traveled south to Onate and cleaned up (in a huge way) in the girls race. Rio Rancho went north to Santa Fe and cleaned up in the boys race. Caleb Rubalcaba wasn't running for RR, but we'll take that as a meet off to rest up in the absence of any word to the contrary. As many opportunities as Cleveland and Rio Rancho get to see each other, it's probably nice for both that they headed in opposite directions this weekend.
This coming weekend, almost the whole of New Mexico converges on Rio Rancho HS for the Rio Rancho Jamboree. Three weeks later, most of them come back for the state meet.
In Nevada, it pretty much came down to one of two scenarios, a large invitational in the Las Vegas area and another invitational in the Reno area. That does seem to be a recurring theme in Nevada. The main break we get from that theme is the occasional foray into California to run in the big meets there.
Centennial was nothing short of dominant at the Lake Mead Invitational, and Nick Hartle slammed an exclamation point onto that dominance by winning the individual title by 54 seconds, with a course record.
Arbor View, a team that looked very strong at Woodbridge (CA) a couple weeks back, struggled to third in the girls division, with Green Valley and Shadow Ridge laying claim to the first two places. Depth is likely to be a concern for each of these teams as NXN-SW approaches.
The heavy hitters from the Reno area ventured over to the Clovis Invitational in California this weekend. That would include Galena, Carson, and South Tahoe. Carson managed the 18th-best finish among all girls teams present at the meet. South Tahoe placed 87th on the same list and, by virtue of that, have a lot of ground to make up to be considered for an NXN-SW bid.
Among the boys, Galena had the 49th-best team finish and Carson the 57th. California is a tough state for cross country competition, but these two teams can't be looking at these results as encouraging signs of where they are in the scheme of things.
Clovis Invitational Official Meet Site
It was a Who's Who of Colorado female high school cross country runners at the start of the Pat Patten Invite on Friday. Kelsey Lakowske, second from lett, sneaked away for the win. Photo by Jeff McCoy.