Arapahoe takes an early lead in the 4 X 800 over Littleton and Dakota Ridge at the City of Littleton Championships. Photo by Tracy Peterson.
Get this, folks, exactly half of the pre-state track and field season is over in Colorado! Five weeks of invitationals are down. In five more weeks, the only meet remaining on the CHSAA-sanctioned schedule will be the state meet.
As with the previous weekend, several meets fell victim to the weather. Those that survived were, with the exception of the Frank Woodburn Invitational in Grand Junction, Friday meets. So, let's review what happened.
Barely qualifying as a weekend meet (but I do need material to work with here) was the Pueblo County Hornet Invitational on Thursday. A timing glitch sabotaged stage qualifying for several events at this meet, but we'll try to focus on the positives rather than the negatives.
One positive is the shot putting of Alamosa's Katie Kruger. She has been out beyond 40 feet all season and her 42-0 meet winner on Thursday merely continued the trend. Kruger wasn't alone down at Pueblo. In fact, the Hornet Invitational was more or less a throwing clinic on Thursday. Other notable outcomes came from Brian Ford of Alamosa (160-10.5 and 52-9), Ken Harriman of Pueblo South (154-7.5 and 56-3), Megan Patterson of Dolores Huerta (39-10), and Kacey Pfannenschmid of Pueblo Centennial at 39-6.
Palmer High School of Colorado Springs, however, had the last laugh--taking home both the boys and the girls trophies on the strength of picking up points across a broad spectrum of events.
Pueblo County Hornet Invitational Results
On Friday, Littleton crowned themselves champions of the City of Littleton. It wasn't close--on either side.
In some results of note, Evan Appel calmed a little bit of speculation about his absences to date by winning the 1600 in 4:23.65. Kyle Macintosh blasted a 38.35 in the 300 hurdles, and Littleton posted a remarkable early-April time of 3:19.63 in the 4 X 400. Arapahoe's Stephanie Gerber did manage to break up what would otherwise have been a Littleton sweep of the hurdle events by winning the 100 hurdles in a nifty time of 15.59.
ThunderRidge is looking more and more like a 5A contender, particularly on the girls side, and their performances at the Broomfield Shootout back up that contention. The quickest draw at the shootout was Kelsey Williamson who won the 400 in 57.12. The relays were very impressive for ThunderRidge as well.
Rachel Hinker of Lyons racked up some serious quick draw points as well by sweeping the short sprints. JaLoni Martinez of Monte Visa tripled his way to a wind legal 43-11. Hometown girls Kayla Wein and Ashley Miknis picked up titles in the 100 and 300 hurdles, respectively.
At Sand Creek, Aldric Brown of Castle View set the high jump standard for the season thus far at 6-9. Tiffany Kenney of Colorado Springs Christian won the high jump and long jump, but had a wind rob her of a prequalifying mark in the latter. Team titles went to Sierra's boys, led by two dominating performances in the 4 x 100 and 4 X 200, and the girls from The Classical Academy. The most surprising mark for The Classical Academy was a state-qualifying winning time of 2:20.20 for Emily LaValley in her debut performance in the 800.
NOTE: With corrected scoring, Sierra won the girls division, not The Classical Academy.
Sand Creek Scorpion Invitational
In a clever little bit of rescheduling, both Windsor and Burlington opted to move their Saturday meets to Friday, both at the expense of a few schools being able to participate. Generally speaking, Colorado Track XC is aggregiously short of results for these two meets (feel welcome to send 'em in if you have them).
What can be said is that Jared Sanderford is making his case as the guy to beat in 2A hurdles, posting times of 15.40 in the 110s and 41.11 in the 300s.
Windsor won both team titles at their own invitational while Burlington's boys did the same at their own invitational. Team honors on the girls side, however, went to Limon. Ever wonder what they do with all the trophies the Limon girls win?
Saturday? Well, if you were a track fan in Colorado, there was only one place to be--Stocker Stadium in Grand Junction. Hopefully, you had a warm coat with you as temps hovered in the 30s most of the day.
Of course, mid 30s in early April is par for the course (oops, wrong sport analogy) in Craig, so it isn't too surprising that Alicia Nelson and Erin Urbanoski of Moffat County took advantage of the familiar conditions to post a 5:09.43 1600 and a 17-10.5 long jump, respectively. Between the two of them, Nelson and Urbanoski won four events to help Moffat County to a team title on the girls side.
On the boys side, Stryker Lane (by the way, Stryker, nice photo as Denver Post wrestler of the year) continues to dominate western slope throwing events, this time advancing his 2A-best shot put mark on the season to 49-9. Brian Ivy of Moffat County (see comment above about familiar weather conditions) launched a 44-5 triple jump into a -1.9 wind for the most notable result on the boys side. Central High School of Grand Junction took home team honors on the strength of their sprint group, led by Blaine Jackson and Nolan Curtis.
Frank Woodburn Invitational Results