Adele Horning (Lake County)
Who chops a minute off their personal best every time they step on the course?
Adele Horning.
And to clarify - she really did run a personal best every time she raced last year.
She opened her high school career with a 23:30, ninth-place finish at the Lake County Cross Country Invitational. The race was won by Eliana Thompson in 21:32.
Three weeks later she started what would be a trend - chopping a minute or so off her PR every time she raced. She ran 22:21 to finish second at the Buena Vista Invitational.
A month later she did again - this time running 21:22 to finish fourth at the 2A Region 1cross country championships. Helen Cross took the W that day, running 19:58.
Four races into her high school career and she dropped her best performance to date - at the state championships.
Horning ran 20:37 that day to finish ninth. Cross finished second in 19:34.
Mallory Salazar (Buena Vista)
Buena Vista's Mallory Salazar has been consistently making gains from year-to-year, and from weekend-to-weekend.
She tallied seven top-10 finishes last year (and one 11th place finish). Of the seven finishes, four were third-place or better.
Consistency always comes before a breakthrough.
A year ago Salazar opened her season with a 22:16, third-place finish in the 2A race at the Cheyenne Mountain Stampede. Rye's Audrey Maroney won the race that day in 20:35.
She backed that up with two more third-place finishes, and a fifth-place finish at in a solid field at the Lake County Invitational.
In late September she toed the line in a loaded field at the Salida Cross Country Classic, and finished 11th. She dropped her best performance to date three weeks later at the 2A Region 3 championships, where she finished second to Maroney. Salazar ran 20:23 that day, while Maroney's winning time was nearly a minute ahead in 19:24.
With momentum on her side Salazar upped the ante once more, and ran her best performance of the season at State (like her freshman year where she finished 11th). This time she crossed the finish line sixth in 20:29 - 29 seconds behind Maroney's fourth-place finish.
Emma Dikken (Platte Canyon)
Platte Canyon's Emma Dikken has finished in the top-10 at State the past two years in a row. So she's not exactly a dark horse per se. Though, that sort of of consistency begs to for a breakthrough.
Dikken opened her season on what is presumably an insanely difficult course - no one broke 22 minutes. Dikken finished eighth that day in 25:30, about 11 seconds behind Clear Creek's Cecilia Davies.
A week later she got her stride rolling at Liberty Bell, running 21:23 to finish 15th. Salazar finished third in the same race, running 20:37.
Two weeks later Dikken captured her first big win, claiming victory at the Runners Roost Invitational in 23:04 - over a minute-and-a-half ahead of Davies. She backed that up with a 35th-place finish in a solid field at the Salida Cross Country Invitational, running 23:16. Salazar ran 21:49 that day.
And then the curve began to really sharpen.
Dikken toed the line three weeks later and made some serious gains. She finished fifth at the 2A Region 3 championships, running a season-best of 20:57 - 34 seconds behind Salazar.
She backed that up just over a week later at the state championships, finishing ninth in 20:40.