Danny Watts and Mitchell Carroll had a nice opener for Falcon at Cheyenne Mountain's Stampede. This week, they take the show to Ponderosa's Stampede. Photo by Alan Versaw.
Six meets instead of four doesn't sound like that much of a bump in action, but looks would be deceiving in this case.
Of the six meets in place for this weekend, we have some of the oldest and largest meets in the state. And, we also have a couple of the newer meets in the state.
This week's cross country action gets underway on Thursday at the Ponderosa Mustang Invitational in Parker. This one is a brand-new, never-been-tried-before meet at Salisbury Park in the heart of Parker. Altogether, 14 teams are headed to Parker to (mostly) open their seasons in a format where freshmen and sophomores race against freshmen and sophomores, and juniors and seniors race against juniors and seniors. There will be no varsity/JV division at this event. The meet is heavy on 4A representation with Frederick, Falcon, The Classical Academy, Evergreen, Skyline, Mead, Pueblo Centennial, and, of course, Ponderosa taking places in the field.
Action heats up considerably on Friday with three meets that are about as deep in tradition as deep gets in Colorado--the Rocky Ford Invitational, the Delta Invitational, and the Arapahoe Warrior Invitational. Rocky Ford doesn't rank as a particularly large meet in the grand scheme of things, but it does have 40 years of history and consistently draws a nice collection of southern Colorado programs. The Delta Invitational, as you might expect, is THE place to be seen in singlets and shorts on the Western Slope. For everyone else--and there's still a lot of "everyone else"--running on Friday, there is the Arapahoe Warrior Invitational. A separate article will preview the Arapahoe Warrior meet later this week.
With Saturday being the beginning of Labor Day Weekend (at least for those who don't sneak out early), meet action slows down a little in the state, but there are still two high school meets to be contested in northern Colorado--the Platte Valley Invitational in Kersey and the SaberCat Invitational in Fort Collins. Both figure to be moderately large meets that draw well from beyond their immediate areas. For those whose tastes tilt toward college and open racing, there is the CU Alumni/Open Time Trial at South Buffalo Ranch in Boulder on Saturday morning as well.
The Platte Valley meet figures also to give us our first look at the newly-minted Byers cross country team, and that could be of considerable interest to the folks camping out in 2A.
If you're a fan of smaller-school cross country, we're looking for a collision of the Rocky Ford, Lamar, and Alamosa boys teams at Rocky Ford on Friday. For those with tastes tending toward larger schools, the Arapahoe Warrior Invite promises Fort Collins, Monarch, Cherry Creek, Mountain Vista, plus several more high-end programs. But, no matter where you go, there is some nice competition to be found.
At this point, the weather forecast looks mostly favorable for this weekend's action. Thunderstorms forecasted for earlier in the week look to be mostly (though not necessarily entirely) cleared out of the state by Thursday, and Delta's Friday date looks to get in ahead of the rebuilding of the heat on the Western Slope. Things could possibly fall a little on the side of warm for the Platte Valley and Sabercat meets, however. It's still August, though, so it's hard to expect much better than that.
The overwhelming majority of the state's teams will be in action this weekend, but still something short of all. With Labor Day Weekend being a traditional travel weekend for families, there are a few teams around the state taking the weekend off. Most of those appear to be teams that got in some early action this past weekend.
Check back here for results as they roll in all through the early part of the weekend!