Eva-Lou Edwards emerges from the dust and shadows of the creek crossing en route to the day's largest victory. Photo by Alan Versaw.
3A girls will miss Eva-Lou Edwards like 5A boys will miss Cerake Geberkidane. There will be feelings of renewed hope intermixed with the sadness attending the departure of one held in such awe and admiration.
For two full seasons now, Edwards has been the undisputed queen of 3A girls cross country. Rivals to the throne have not been so much as a fantasy around these parts. Edwards has simply been that far in front of everyone else. Even on her bad weeks. Or does she have bad weeks?
To put Edwards' title into perpsective, she ran 18:41 absolutely all alone. Faster than Katie Rainsberger. Faster than all but two girls in the state--in any classification. Edwards' 1:26 margin of victory was easily the largest in any classification. By the time Makayla Santos of Frontier Academy came through in second, it almost seemed like another race was finishing. My video guy had to rouse himself from the nap he had started.
As the runners began to stream through in Santos's wake, a recurring theme began to emerge from the chaos. In a sense, Eva-Lou Edwards had started the theme, but one person does not a theme make.
The theme was purple. As in the color purple.
And most of that wave of purple wore a large 'S' front and center on the singlet. We all know what a large 'S' emblazoned front and center on the chest means, and the Salida girls did nothing the dilute the meaning of that impression. Directly behind Santos was Sydney Fesenmeyer (photo, left, by Alan Versaw. If I thought long enough about this, Fesenmeyer just might get my nod as this year's most improved runner over last year.) in third. Moments later is was Phoebe Powell. Then it was Taryn Ceglowski. And, finally, it was Bari Beasley. Act and scene complete; story told.
Salida's 35 points would stand very nicely against the 94 for Estes Park and the 106 for defending state champion Holy Family. Both of those teams, incidentally wear purple. Fourth place went to Frontier Academy, a team that doesn't wear purple, but we all know what you get when you mix dark blue and dark red....
Deep purple, right?
If you weren't wearing purple for the 3A girls race on Saturday, you simply were not properly dressed for the ball.