Boys Battle of the Titans: 3A #1 vs 4A #1
From the perspective of the team competition, the biggest matchup of the meet was without doubt that which took place between 3A Lutheran and 4A Vista Ridge. Checking in on the virtual meet, Vista Ridge is the current #1 boys team in 4A, and Lutheran is the #1 boys team in 3A.
While the aforementioned spring break issues most certainly had an effect on entries, it is hard to look at these point totals and see how dilapidated they could be.
From 400 meters down, Vista Ridge made its presence known all day. They won the 4x200 and 4x400. They were 3rd in the 4x100 and 7th in the 4x800. In the case of their two relay wins, two were done so in meet record time. The 1:28.87 in the 4x200 and the 3:21.15 also rank them as the absolute best in their classification. Isaiah Lapioli, Desmond Calhoun, and Anthony Bellot worked on both relays. Aidan Pena and Kobe Christiansen both served in the 4x200 and 4x400 respectively.
Lapioli, Christiansen, Pena and Bryan Petersen were especially brilliant in the 400m as they went 1st, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Go and take a look at the 400 meter rankings for 4A, if state were tomorrow, Vista Ridge High School would have five boys running the 400m. Calhoun and Bellot were 4th and 7th in the 100m.
Other event winners for Vista Ridge were Raymon Harper going 21-5 in the long jump and Tristan Pratt going 6-5 in the high jump.
As good as Vista Ridge was all day, Lutheran just seemed to be a little bit better. Lutheran answered Vista Ridge's dominance of the 400m with their own in the 100m as Luke Arkell was 2nd, Nick Ciccio was 3rd and Chaz Biondino was 6th. Arkell and Biondino were especially important for the team effort on Thursday as they also placed 2nd and 6th in the 200m, and ran in the first place 4x100.
Beyond the 4x100, the only other event winner on the day for Lutheran was Jacob Dack, winning the shot put with a 3A number one 52-11. Otherwise, Lutheran did to the field what they have continually done over the last few years which is wear teams down by their depth and number of placers. The Lutheran hurdle crew of Aaron Clausen and Nate Hanson and Cody Robbins scored four times in the 110m and 300m.
At the end of the day, the point tally stood Lutheran 109 to Vista Ridge 104. With all of these dominating sprint and explosion event performances, it might be difficult to see where Lutheran pulled ahead. The answer to that lies in a place where historically neither team has scored a whole lot of points: distance.
The one place where Lutheran scored points where Vista Ridge didn't is the 800m. Nicholas Runco was 3rd at 2:00.14, AJ Thompson was 4th at 2:01.60, and Yosheab Beyene was 8th at 2:05.64. For any coach who has ever had to argue with an athlete about finishing a race hard, it is worth noting that Runco now sits atop the 3A leaderboard in the 800m by .01.