Keeping you up-to-date on the world of high school cross country here in Colorado.
The first thing to address here is the lingering confusion from last weekend over the inclusion of St. Mary's in the 2A races at the Cheyenne Mountain Stampede. St. Mary's does, in fact, remain in 3A cross country this year. St. Mary's opted up to run 3A cross country in 2016, and CHSAA does change teams' classifications mid cycle.
All of the regional meets, save one, are now posted on the Colorado Track XC calendar and in the CHSAA bulletin. 2A Region 2, a largely Colorado Springs/South Denver region remains the lone holdout at this point.
This may be a record year for first-year cross country coaches around Colorado. In El Paso County alone, the list of schools with first-year coaches includes (but may not be limited to): Thomas Maclaren School, Colorado Springs Christian, Peyton, Liberty, Discovery Canyon, Pine Creek, Palmer Ridge, Coronado, St. Mary's, and Vanguard. And, I know of several more around the state. I woke up sometime earlier this month to discover that I'm now in the top 5% of cross country coaches around the state in terms of longevity in my current position. In El Paso County, now only Ben Montoya at Fountain-Fort Carson has been in his position longer.
Some of the other long-time-same-position coaches around the state include Larry Zaragoza at Alamosa, Ron Shepherd at Rocky Ford, Mario Garcia at Wiggins, Mark Roberts at Lyons, Chris Keleher at Aspen, Bernie Pearce at Ouray, Kelly Cowan at Hotchkiss, Gregg Smith at Gunnison, Dave Good at Holy Family, Scott Anderson at Pagosa Springs, Scott and Judy Chamberlin at Wheat Ridge, and Sharon Eberhard at University. It never gets old seeing these people at the state meet.
Registration for Nike Cross Southwest opens September 12. And, this year, the participation waiver for athletes will be online. Speaking as someone who was about half-way down the road from Chandler to Casa Grande when he realized he left the participation waivers in the hotel room, that comes as a small to moderate measure of relief. I do not know yet how the particulars of filling out the participation waivers will work.
If you're wanting to get a race in between state cross country and Nike Cross Southwest, your options appear to be the USATF-Colorado Junior Olympic championships (at a date and location still to be announced), the Tomahawk 2 Mile in Colorado Springs, and the Demon 2 Mile in Durango. You will want to talk to Stan Lambros at Cheyenne Mountain or David McMillan at Durango if you have an interest in either of the latter two events. The last I spoke with David, he did not yet have a date firmed up for the Demon 2 Mile, but presumably a little more than a week before NXR-SW.
For those of you who did not know--and the news certainly slipped past me--Lyle Knudson passed away in April of this year. Lyle was an active distance coach up until the time of his death. He coached one year not too long ago at Battle Mountain but was primarily involved in individual coaching of distance runners.