A Shorten Sweep At The Niwot HS Invitational

Mountain View's Kiera Shorten (left) tracked down Broomfield's Sierra Parks (right) to win the girl's race.


It was the second race of the season for the Shorten siblings. And much like the first race, the brother and sister brought home individual titles once again.

With the time trial start Jackson Shorten started first and never looked back on his way to a 23 second victory. He covered the course in 15:54.

Meanwhile, sister Kiera Shorten started four places back and overcame front-runner Sierra Parks en route to a 12 second win. She finished the course in 19:28

On the boy's side, Broomfield's James Thomas finished in second place crossing the line in 16:17. Heritage's senior Michael Beck started the scoring for Heritage in third place and a time of 16:29.

Abuzaid Fanning (16:51) of Frontier Academy finished fourth with Connor Kennedy (17:06) notching Heritage's second scorer finishing in fifth. His teammate Jason Becker (17:13) was seven seconds behind him in sixth.

Heritage's fourth and fifth scorers were 20th and 22nd, and the front running proved to be just enough to edge Mountain Vista in the team race by 12 points.

Mountain Vista placed runners from 11th-18th with a measly 23 seconds between the first and fifth runners and less than a minute between all eight runners.

Broomfield's Parks finished in 19:40 today and was the only other girl under the 20:00 threshold. Behind her was teammate Maelynn Higgins as she finished in 20:05. Cayden Justice of Niwot was fourth in 20:19. Nina St John of Mountain Vista and Olivia Alessandrini of Niwot both crossed the line in 20:22 with St. John took fifth by 0.8 seconds.

Paisley Williamson was 10th for Broomfield and looked as if they were going to have enough firepower to take home the team title. Niwot responded with three runners in succession at 16-17-18 and that was enough to snag a nine point team victory for the Cougars.

Niwot took the team title with 60 points. Broomfield finished second with 71, just four points ahead of Mountain Vista's 75.