"I'll match your two strides with three of mine." Photo by Alan Versaw.
Boulder, Monarch, and Fort Collins? Monarch, Fort Collins, and Boulder? Or is it Fort Collins, Monarch, and Boulder?
And would the outcome depend on who's healthy and who's not? And did anyone take Arapahoe into account?
About all that I'm sure of at this point are these two things:
1. It's way too easy to underestimate Fort Collins heading into a big race, and
2. The folks who do national rankings don't have much of a clue yet about how good these teams are. It will probably take until NXN-SW to fix that.
On Saturday, October 20, 2010, the Fort Collins girls stood head-and-shoulders above the competition. On this day, at least, the Bah-Ram-Ewe crew was easily better than the other teams assembled for the race.
Starting with Erin Hooker dueling for the lead with Eleanor Fulton on the first spin of the course, and ending with concluding with Audrey Oweimrin crossing the finish line in 20:22 to close out the Fort Collins scoring, the Lambkins kept pressing the issue, giving the opposition no quarter, and generally making of nuisance of themselves where the other contenders were concerned. It paid off with a 24-point victory over purple rival Boulder.
Erin Hooker's duel with Eleanor Fulton looked for a while to be a lost cause as Boulder's Kelsey Lakowske passed both and Fulton opened up a small lead on Hooker late on the second loop. Apparently, however, Hooker found a little something extra in the last couple hundred meters, passing Fulton to reclaim second with a time of 18:29 (Note: The 5A girls race was the last race of the day without a significant element of wind affecting the runners.).
Kelsey Lakowske's winning time of 18:11 gave Boulder a nice initial setup, but the second finisher for Boulder came in 20th, while Marci Witczak came in 13th for Fort Collins. The trading back and forth of places continued through the fourth runners for both teams. It was at that point that Fort Collins established most of its final margin on Boulder.
Monarch's hopes took a big hit when sophomore Taylor Floming dropped out of the race with less than 500 meters remaining.
The ten 5A girls medalists were a testimony to how broadly the talent was distributed across the field this year. Only Highlands Ranch managed to put two in the top 10. Highlands Ranch would go on to finish fifth in the field. And a tough field it is.
As alluded to before, the biggest surprise of the day was the strength of the Arapahoe entry. Arapahoe has been running well all seaon, but generally not regarded as quite on a par with the big three of Boulder, Fort Collins, and Monarch, Maybe, just maybe, the Warriors got tired of hearing about the three other schools and took it to the course to make a statement. In any case, it was a solid and remarkable effort for the crew led by junior Colleen Koenig.