Pine Creek's Heather Bates breaks the tape all alone, but it took some late rewriting of the script to get us to this point. Photo by Karen McCoy.
If all you saw of today's 5A girls state contest was the team scoring, you'd likely shrug your shoulders and say, "Saw that one coming."
And there was very little surprising about Monarch edging Fort Collins for first, with Pine Creek running a close third. But how the 5A girls race ended up there was anything but predictable. The course the race took to get there took more twists and turns than a broken field run by Barry Sanders.
Things started out innocently enough, but they ditched the script somewhere beyond the crest of Hodgson Hill.
After staking a large lead on the field, Jordyn Colter slowed down and eventually retired from the course. As of this writing, I have no definite word on what happened to Colter, but conflicting speculation knows no bounds.
While Colter's departure didn't have an enormous impact on the team race, the problems that overtook Erin Hooker would have an enormous impact. Still somewhat on the mend from on injury from last spring, Hooker's season has been a light load of alternating weeks of resting and racing. But, Hooker's races to this point in the season have been nothing less than impressive, including two big, and convincing, wins at the TCA Titan Thunder and the Front Range League meet.
So, it's safe to say nobody saw today's 34th-place finish coming. And, that finish did a demolition job on the Fort Collins teams scoring, adding at least 20 - 25 points to the total from what would otherwise have been expected.
But, it's not as if Monarch slid into this one without any problems of their own. When you look and see that Elissa Mann was Monarch's top finisher on the day, you realize that there were some curious conditions in the Coyote Camp as well. Elissa Mann is a solid runner in her own right, and without question one of the very best 3/4 kind of runners the state has ever known. But, that's exactly the point, Mann doesn't usually run ahead of Kaitlyn Benner and Claire Green.
So, it would appear that Monarch may have limped this one in as well.
All the troubles in the Land of the Giants very nearly threw this meet in Pine Creek's favor. And Pine Creek doesn't really need all that much in the way of help. But, if you look closely at the Pine Creek scoring, there are some subtle hints that all may have been some more minor deviations from the usual script in the Eagle's nest as well.
It would appear nobody came away unscathed.
When Colter dropped, Pine Creek's Heather Bates raced to the lead and never looked back, winning by an almost unthinkable margin (for 5A) of 43 seconds. Only some serious stepping up by the Elissa Manns of Kari Van Zyls of the Monarch and Fort Collins rosters kept Pine Creek in third, nine points back of Monarch and two points back of Fort Collins.
There were twists on the usual script of the positive variety on this day as well. Continuing to show elevated promise with increasing regularity, Lakewood's Olivia Hayden climbed into the medals with an eighth-place finish. Fossil Ridge leapfrogged several teams with better press clippings to claim sixth in the team standings. Emma Gee and Melanie Nun, Legacy's two lone contestants in the race, finished second and fifth, respectively.
And we all were reminded that there are good reasons why we run the race instead of handing out the trophies and medals in advance.