Around the Southwest in 20 Minutes: Weekend of October 11/12

If you are looking for the eventual winners of the Albuquerque Metro Championships, they are currently mired in the middle of the pack. Photo by Alan Versaw.

As has become our pattern this fall, we'll start in Nevada and work our way counter-clockwise around the region.

Nevada

Centennial showed up in California this last weekend and showed up a bunch of California teams at the Santa Clarita Valley Invitational. For three miles, Centennial had five guys under 16:10. That's noteworthy, so consider everything positive we've said about Centennial this fall to be validated (yet again). 

The Douglas boys won at the Reed Invitational in the Reno area, but times look like they were running in a bog. Bogs aren't exactly common in Nevada, so we'll assume there was some other compelling reason for the times. Douglas also had the top Nevada girls finish in the meet, but much too big of a 1-5 gap to scratch out a place on the regional radar screen with this effort.

At the Lake Mead Invitational, the Las Vegas area teams (minus the Centennial boys) met to determine the local pecking orders. We don't see much of regional signficance arising from the boys races, but Arbor View edged Centennial in the girls race with the kind of times that warrant at least a second glance. Both Arbor View and Centennial, however, suffer from mid-scoring-pack kind of gaps that will make things difficult for them at meets deeper than this one.

Arizona

After Desert Twilight, a lot of higher-tier teams took a kind of siesta. But not all.

Tuba City's boys pounded some folks in their own Bud Davis Invitational. Page wasn't there, which would have made for an interesting matchup, but the Tuba boys are the real deal nevertheless. We saw that last week at the Desert Twilight, and nothing about this weekend changed any of those impressions.

Flagstaff's girls won the Ken Denson Invitational without the services of Tatiana Gillick, but the meet wasn't stacked with deep teams, so it's a little difficult to get a good read on the meaning of the results. Cactus Shadows edged Ironwood for the boys title, but both teams need to bolster their later scoring positions.

New Mexico

Zuni extended their reign of terror over the New Mexico small-school boys teams at their home Patason Amesoli Invitational, but did encounter some resistance from Laguna-Acoma, last year's scourge of the New Mexico small schools. Assuming Zuni heads to the Rio Rancho Jamboree this weekend, we should get a much better read on them than we've had to date. The new method of assigning races means Zuni gets the opportunity to run up with the big school teams this weekend. That should be telling, and there's probably a little excitement brewing at a small school in western New Mexico on account of that.

For the most part, however, the action to be found in New Mexico was on the campus of Albuquerque Academy. Eldorado (girls) and Albuquerque Academy (boys) ran away with the team titles at the Albuquerque Metro Championships, though it's an understatement to say that neither team enjoyed their best race of the season. But, winning is still more important that winning pretty. The Rio Rancho boys were second, but seemed to be running with a clogged fuel injector. For the second weekend in a row, RR didn't quite seem to be hitting the paces that their early-season races indicated for them. Meanwhile, Cleveland's boys continue to creep closer. Pay attention to what's going on here as the shadow of doubt is inching closer to some early-season assumptions.

Albuquerque Academy and Rio Rancho followed Eldorado in the girls race, but neither AA nor RR had exceptional races in their own right. Sometimes, all the tension and build-up to a big event like the Metro Championships plays itself out in the kind of hit-and-miss performances we saw last weekend in Albuquerque.

Colorado

It was league meet week in Colorado, which means many more meets that usual. I won't discuss the meets in much detail so as not to get bogged down in minutiae.

Monarch sat the regulars and Fort Collins rolled over both genders of the Front Range League meet. Pueblo West's boys destroyed any resistance at the South-Central League meet. Coronado lowered the boom in the massive mismatch that was the Colorado Springs Metro 4A League meet. Coronado did that in both boys and girls, but the boys results have more immediate significance to the Southwest regional order of things. Coronado's boys could be a top ten regional team.

Arapahoe's boys edged Cherry Creek in the Centennial League meet, but a second puzzling performance from Arapahoe front runner Louis Hood has a few folks scratching their heads. Cherry Creek's top three gave them a huge scoring advantage initially, but the depth of Arapahoe prevailed. As expected, Cherry Creek's girls dominated the league meet.

At the Continental League meet, Mountain Vista's boys rolled through folks on their home course. The ThunderRidge girls were there and running but seemed to have objectives other than winning the league meet in mind.

Sometimes (well, maybe most of the time), there's a lot of cat-and-mouse that goes on during Colorado's league meet weekend.

Utah

Some regionals are in the books, while others take place this week. Regional meets in Utah are small (and not many teams get eliminated from the state meet at this stage), so Utah warrants a little bit of the treatment given Colorado, above.

In Region 1, it was Davis all over everybody, without compassion or remorse. The Darts are in championship season mode, and this team has a pretty clear picture of what it takes to win (and, actually, this meet was held on Monday, but it would be well past old news if we don't get to it until next week).

Region 2 was Hillcrest's playground. Hillcrest has made a major appearance on the regional radar screen yet this season, so it's difficult to get too excited about the results from this past weekend, but there's enough here to at least put the results out for closer inspection.

Bingham, as expected, won both Region 3 titles, but maybe got more push-back along the way that what they bargained for. Jordan made things interesting on the girls side and Alta put together a very strong effort to earn some recognition points for their boys.

Much more remains to be determined over the next couple days in Utah.