Mountain Vista Distance Shine At The Continental Relays


The Mountain Vista distance crew shined at the Continental Relays this past weekend.

The distance runners of Mountain Vista showed that they certainly had not been resting on their laurels this winter after their boys and girls teams won the team titles for 5A cross country last fall. The Golden Eagles kept that momentum rolling forward just like daylight savings time as they stole the show in most of the distance relay events this past weekend.

When the starter's gun popped for the start of the girls 6400 meter relay, a strong team led by Sarah O'Sullivan, who placed 5th last fall at State Cross Country, topped the field by over 100 meters, beating out Regis with a time of 23:01versus 23:26 for the four-miles-total race.

"I felt really good today," said the team's first runner, Rebecca Walton. "Plus, we had perfect conditions."

Walton spoke, of course, before the strong headwinds typical of early March track meets kicked in for the later events.

The Mountain Vista girls kept the wins coming with victories in the Distance Medley Relay, the 4x800, the sprint medley relay as well as the 4x400, and just narrowly missed out in the 4x200, with close rivals Highlands Ranch taking the win in 1:48.55 to 1:48.68. 

Kara Lucyk ran away with an individual crown in the 100m hurdles in 16.26.

In the 4x200, Highlands Ranch edged out the Vista ladies to win by a hair in 1:48.55 to 1:48.62.

Though the times slowed down as the winds picked up later, that didn't stop the Mountain Vista boys 4x800 from notching a number of individual PR's, to claim the win in 8:20 over Legend's 8:34.

"We had a pretty tough week of training," Brody Dempsey explained. "Lots of the guys still PR'ed though." 

The boys kept it rolling for the DMR, braving a stiff headwind and winning in 11:14 over second place Heritage's 11:28, with Highlands Ranch, Douglas County and Chapparel finishing within seconds of each other.

In the 4x1600 however, an upset came in the form of Rock Canyon where, despite Vista's strong first leg, they were swallowed up in the second leg by the Jaguars, who ran to the win, never looking back, to dominate the event with a 35 second landslide victory over the field.

Showing depth and versatility in the sprint events, Mountain Vista won the 1600 meter sprint medley relay by 10 seconds in 3:52 over Second place Thunder Ridge.

In the 4x400 meter relay, Vista again took the win in 3:34 over runner-up Legend's 3:38.

The men's 800 meter sprint relay saw a neck in neck finish between Heritage and Ponderosa, clocking 1:41 and 1:42, respectively.

On the field, one to watch once again this year will certainly be Chapparel's Connor Quinlan, who vaulted to clear the standard at 13-feet, six-inches, to win the pole vault in dominant fashion by a foot-and-a-half. 

Castle View's Zander Scarbrough had a powerful jump of 21-feet, three-inches to win the long jump by a solid margin. 

With the rust now busted for what looks to be a promising season, keep an eye out for the competition to turn up a notch as these teams get fitter, faster, and bring out more of their heavy hitters for the bigger meets coming up soon.