Paxton Smith and Cooper Wiens raced nearly shoulder-to-shoulder for several laps, before Smith made his decisive move. Photo by Alan Versaw.
It is beyond question that Chris Bradford and Jen Michel had some skeptics when they added a 1600 meter steeplechase to the event roster of today's Western State High School Indoor Open.
After all, who ever heard of putting a steeplechase barrier on the front and back straights of a 200 meter track at over 7700 feet of altitude. As if distance racing isn't brutal enough in Gunnison as it is. But, forge ahead they did, and it turned out that about a dozen young men took them up on their offer.
It was 15 barriers and 1600 metes of sheer excitement. Nobody in the field house was paying attention to anything else for those five to six minutes. Places shuffled throughout the first of eight laps around the indoor oval, but eventually Gunnison's own Cooper Wiens found his way into the lead.
Haunting Wiens' should for the next half mile was Paxton Smith. With...
