It wasn't long into the girls race before Boulder and TCA were locking horns. Photo by Alan Versaw.
It's usually not to hard to find a parking spot around Lyons. It was this morning, however, as 39 teams converged on Lyons Junior Senior High School for the St. Vrain Invitational.
With the Lyons course slated to host the 4A region consisting of mostly Northern League teams, there was solid representation from schools in the Loveland and Greeley areas as well as the usual assortment of schools from the Patriot League, plus larger schools from the Longmont and Boulder area.
The rain held off through the varsity races, but even the rain that came could not have put out the fires lit on the course.
The girls race went first and featured a match-up of two of the state's highest-ranked programs--Boulder and The Classical Academy. A separation of only two teams on the starting line assured that neither team could do much to avoid the other.
The first mile went out slowly, at least according to the standards to which these two teams are accustomed. Both Kelsey Lakowske and Kaitlin Hanenburg seemed reluctant to force the pace early and passed through the mile at roughly 6:00. Teammates from both schools, plus Allie Parks and Janelle Martinez of Greeley Central passed behind in close order. In the next mile, however, things started heating up as Lakowske went through two miles at 11:45 with Hanenburg only a few seconds behind. Hanenburg had closed the gap entirely by 2.5 miles, but failed to answer Lakowske's final burst. Lakowske finished in a blistering 17:51, with Hanenburg just a few seconds back in 17:58.
As they did last week at the Pat Patten Invite, Lakowske and teammate Sam Lewis gave Boulder a very strong 1-2 punch. While Hanenburg did split the two, Lewis still managed a very strong third place finish to give Boulder the advantage through two runners. Ultimately, though, Boulder's 1-3-10-17-21 came up 14 points short of TCA's 2-4-7-12-13 in the 4A/5A division. The Classical Academy put six runners in under 20:00 to claim the meet title.
If there were any lingering doubts about the depth of either program, the junior varsity race squashed those doubts. The two schools combined to put another six runners across the finish line with times under 21:30 in JV race.
Estes Park captured the 2A/3A division by 15 points over last year's 2A state champion, Nederland. Individual honors among the small school entries went to Melissa Roberts of Lyons with a time of 19:25.
It wasn't far into the boys' race before it was apparent that Boulder had no equals in the field of nearly 40 teams. Even running without Ashi Guiles, Boulder was able to put away the 4A/5A field with a 1-2-9-11-29 finish. Assuming Guiles will be back and Rex Quaratone moves up to varsity half-way through the season (transfer rule), Boulder looks to have a very strong state entry on the horizon.
Second in the 4A/5A field was The Classical Academy. TCA ran the deepest lineup on the day, putting all seven runners across the line in under 18:00. Still, TCA came up short (52-62) to the local powerhouse.
The overall winner of the boys race was Brush's Amos Bowen. Bowen separated from the field relatively early and was never challenged en route to a 16:04 finish. University was a slightly surprising winner of the small school division, posting 80 points to 85 for Colorado Academy. The Colorado Academy Mustangs had the 3, 4, and 5 finishers in the 2A/3A race, but absorbed 73 points at the 4th and final scoring position.