Long Bus Rides Yield Fast Times
Looking at the results of the boys race, the first major takeaway is that it is apparently a strategic advantage to put your team on a school bus and drive for no less than sixty minutes. Of the top ten teams, only Arvada West and Rangeview would drive less than an hour to reach Carpenter fields.
With an extraordinarily wide start area, it is no problem to squeeze 350 athletes into the same race. The start of the Thornton Invite always conjures up images of an army rushing off to war, or cross country fans rushing the timer at state to the wall to see results.
Once the race strung out, mile one saw a nice little pack of northern area boys cruising along at a 5:05 clip. Albert Steiner and Philip Henry down from Laramie were there. So was Blake Hubert from Fossil Ridge. Ryan Lehmuth from Jefferson Academy, Joshua Krafsur from Fort Collins and Evan Graff from Montrose rounded out the lead pack. Once things flattened out, the pack strung out a little more until mile two when all that was left of the lead pack was Lehmuth and the two boys from Laramie.
On mile three Lehmuth made his move and at one point gapped the two boys from Laramie by about fifteen meters. Lehmuth rounded the corner in first, but Steiner saw an opportunity and furiously kicked down Lehmuth about 20 meters before the finish line. Steiner, the reigning 3200m and 1600m Wyoming state champion crossed the line at 15:45. Lehmuth held on for second in 15:47. Henry was third in 15:51.
Steiner and Henry started off the scoring for what turned out to be a fairly dominant Laramie Plainsman victory. Liam McInroy (16:37), Derk Lyford (16:56), and Jordan Tangeman (17:12) finished 18th, 25th and 32nd to wrap up scoring. 79 points, and a shiny meet title to extract from the great rectangle to the south.