The End--More or Less--of Invitationals for 2015

The crowd that visited Moffat County last weekend figures to split up between Aspen and Delta this weekend. Photo by Matt Scoggins.

As difficult as it is to believe, the invitational season winds down this weekend. Well, almost. You have a couple meets that are true invitationals which extend into next week. But, for all practical purposes, you can kiss invitationals good-bye on Saturday afternoon.

For most coaches, invitationals are all about learning. Athletes learn how to find a pace they can sustain. They learn to find the edge of hurt and stay there. They learn they're capable of so much more than they knew at the beginning of the season.

And, those same athletes are generally a fair bit more beat up at the end of invitational season than they were at the beginning. The rate of meet appearances does have a tendency to diminish as the invitational season wears on.

Somehow, though, most of those athletes are back for championship season. Such is the rhythm of the cross country season.

There are plenty of opportunities to close out the invitational season coming this weekend.

Before we get to the weekend, however, there are a couple of league meets making early appearances on the schedule on Thursday. Those would be the 3A Metro and Pikes Peak League meets. You probably won't see many of those athletes in uniform on Friday or Saturday.

A slate of six invitationals and one league meet greets us on Friday. The Northern League runs their meet at Sunset Golf Course in Longmont. Breaking 17 or 20 is considered something of a major feat on this course, so this one figures to be a lot more about strength than speed. It will be interesting to see how that plays out in the results. The Northern is traditionally among the most competitive leagues in the state.

Invitationals crop up in La Jara, Delta, Palisade, Northglenn, and two in Colorado Springs.

In La Jara, the Centauri Tortoise and Hare figures to be on the side of small and drawing mostly, if not entirely, San Luis Valley teams. Alamosa has been quiet of late and they are a San Luis Valley team, but this doesn't seem like a meet where they'd choose to blow the doors off the barn.

Delta figures to get a decent slice of the Western Slope pie for teams okay with running on the Delta Speedway twice in the span of two weeks.

Palisade's meet has developed into a mostly JV kind of affair in recent years. We'll see if that trend continues this year. With three other meets on the Western Slope this weekend, though, chances are it will be mostly a local JV outing.

The Pat Amato in Northglenn figures to be huge--as it usually is. Huge, fast, and very competitive. Some of the state's fastest times the last three years have come out of this meet.

Down in Colorado Springs, Doherty and TCA split the crowd, both meets offering a bit of relief valve to the other in tight parking situations. And, both meets will be drawing some out-of-state competition. Doherty pulls from Austin, Texas, and Garden City, Kansas. TCA pulls from Los Alamos, New Mexico. It's always fun to see a brand new set of singlets.

On Saturday, it's another mix of league meets and invitationals. League meets will be contested for the Frontier and Patriot Leagues.

Wiggins hosts a league meet built into an invitational, though the invitational definitely dwarfs the Lower Platte League meet. You probably don't need to be reminded that it's all about going fast when you pull up to Wiggins.

Pure invitationals will be hosted by Montezuma-Cortez and Englewood. The settings of these two meets could not be more different. Montezuma-Cortez hosts on rough trails at the end of the northern slopes of Mesa Verde. Englewood hosts a very urban, mostly-sidewalk-and-asphalt course on the south side of the Denver Metro area.

Over the mountains, another pure invitational takes on the side of a mountain in Aspen. The Chris Severy figures to blow up lungs and legs with a grinding ascent followed by a hair-raising descent. At least I'm assuming that same daunting course is still in play. Chances are this one will outdraw the Delta meet. It's the last shot of mountain racing adrenaline on the Colorado high school cross country circuit. And, the adrenaline from this one could last you for a good, long time.

Colorado Track XC coverage will be headed to Doherty (Tim Hilt), Chris Severy (Michele Bisbee), Northern League (Ellie Colpitts), and TCA (Alan Versaw). Ashley Green will be pointing a camera at the Pat Amato as well. If I'm sufficiently recovered from hosting an invitational on Friday, I'm mulling over the possibility of trying some coverage of the Englewood Windjammer on Saturday. But I'm making no promises about that.

Either way, it's a massive weekend of coverage. Be sure you don't miss any of it!