The top six finishers at Colorado 5A Region 5 all wore Mountain Vista green. Photo by Joel Hawkins.
Things are starting to come down to the wire on the 2015 cross country season. Let's take a look at the news from the Southwest region.
Nevada
The Silver State was very quiet this past week in anticipation of next week's regional qualifying for state. If you wanted to find Nevada action, you pretty much had to go to Mt. SAC. Palo Verde turned in the top Nevada performances, both boys and girls at the meet, but it could be a bit of a reach to suggest they showed us anything there they hadn't shown earlier in the season. And, the showing of North Tahoe might be enough to raise a few eyebrows on the small-school girls side of things. It's almost pointless to try to find the needles of individual team results in the Mt. SAC haystack of results, though, so if you'd like to see how they did, I would point you at the Palo Verde and North Tahoe results pages.
Arizona
It was very much about city meets in Arizona this past week, though there were a few meets not adhering to the assigned theme.
As soon as you read the meet title of Chandler City Meet, you probably have a good idea what went down. The Chandler girls pounded the opposition, taking the first six places. And, given that they all finished within three seconds of one another, they probably did it as more of a workout than a race. Net result, we didn't learn much we didn't already know about Chandler. Perry High School dominated the boys almost as thoroughly as Chandler did the girls.
The Holbrook Invitational saw the Tuba City boys take on, and dispose of, a field of competition that included Hopi, Snowflake, and several other northern Arizona teams. None were up to the task, even with Tuba opening a large 4-5 scoring gap. On the girls side, Flagstaff (not a small school) spotted Ganado a couple of high places before coming roaring back and dominating the meet. Ganado did, however, handily put away the small-school competition.
The Mesa City Meet ended up as a showcase for Mesa Mountain View--both boys and girls. One of Arizona's top cross country programs had no difficulty quelling the most local opposition.
In the Yuma City Meet, Gila Ridge administered a lesson to the field in the boys race, but got upended by Cibola on the girls side. Times weren't especially fast given the reputation of the teams, so we'll hypothesize something about the course, the conditions, or both.
Desert Vista kept Corona del Sol a distant second in both genders of the Tempe City Meet, in what may have been the best matchup of the entire week. And, no, DV didn't need their first team girls to get it done.
Down in Tombstone, Buena--which evidently didn't have a city meet to go to--manhandled both the boys and girls divisions. Buena likely qualifies as one of the more underappreciated Arizona cross country programs.
Like Nevada, Arizona goes to Divisional qualifying this week, with state taking its place on the calendar at November 7.
New Mexico
The Land of Enchantment is another state that saw limited action this past week in advance of District qualifying this week. I strongly suspect there are more results than what we have posted, but we'll play with the cards we're dealt.
The big-deal meet in New Mexico was held on the Los Alamos golf course, an uncharacteristically green and grassy locale for New Mexico cross country. The elevation, the grass, and the rolling nature of the venue join forces and tend to dampen times just a little.
At the Los Alamos Invitational, Albuquerque Academy cut the Los Alamos boys score in half to take top honors, relegating Cleveland to third. Pecos paced the small-school representation with a very solid fourth-place finish, beating a highly-regarded East Mountain team to those honors. Meanwhile, the Los Alamos girls edged Cleveland and Taos to come away with top honors at their home meet. Taos, at least, was not intimidated by the elevation and led the small-school delegation. St. Pius X and Albuquerque Academy followed at a greater distance. AA appears to have been short a hand or two in this race. What that means is not immediately clear.
The annual Ruidoso Invitational also welcome lower elevation folks to thinner air. Centennial, probably the #2 team out of Las Cruces took top honors among the girls teams gathered, but it's hard to say what the times here mean. Clovis was a considerable distance back. Among the boys, Clovis topped Carlsbad for top honors, but the times do not suggest these performances register in a big way on the regional radar.
The Sandia Invitational brought together some of the Albuquerque delegation to square off against Laguna-Acoma. Small-school L-A drilled the boys field. The Hawks are a legitimate small-school power.
Colorado
In Colorado, it was all about regional qualifying, which means there weren't a lot of delicious match-ups on the the table.
The Mountain Vista boys perfert scored (plus one) 5A Region 5, and their female counterparts were very nearly as ruthless in their handling of the competition. 5A Region 5, by the way, is a 12-team region, and several of the teams are very solid teams.
The Fort Collins and Boulder boys were impressive in their wins as 5A Region 4 and 5A Region 3, respectively. Fairview's girls toppled Monarch's girls in 5A Region 3. Broomfield's girls dominated 5A Region 4, a region that has belonged to Fort Collins for time out of memory.
Durango's boys and Battle Mountain's girls were on fire at 4A Region 6.
Strong small-school performances were posted by the Battle Mountain boys and girls, The Classical Academy boys and girls in 4A Region 2, the Alamosa boys in 3A Region 2, The Frontier Academy boys in 3A Region 4, the Peak to Peak girls in 3A Region 3, the Heritage Christian Academy girls in 2A Region 1, and the Salida girls in 3A Region 2.
Regionals, though, are mostly about qualifying, so it is entirely possible to read too much into these regional results, both positively and negatively. And, who knows exactly how to interpret all the absences of top runners?
Utah
You probably already know Utah had their state meet this past week, with Davis finally dethroning American Fork for the boys title and American Fork triumphing over Davis for the girls crown. You can check out all of the various classification results at the Utah State Cross Country page.
It seems safe to say that the following Utah teams have regional championship berths for the asking: Davis, Timpanogos, Desert Hills, Lehi, American Fork, Lone Peak, and Ogden. Beyond that, there's likely to be some give-and-take based on how many entries other states bring to the table. A similar list for the girls would appear to include American Fork, Davis, Timpanogos, Mountain View, and Pine View.
In addition, I do want to draw your attention to this article that brings together a merge of the small-school team performances at the Utah state meet. We'll do the same with Colorado this week in an effort to help identify the top small school programs--something that doesn't always stand out from a simple glance at the results where teams are spread across multiple classfications.