Mountain Vista Girls: Four Years in the Making

Lindsey Smith fights her way up Powerline Climb at last year's state meet. She'll have a bigger hill, literally and metaphorically, to climb at state this year. Photo by Paul Jaeger.

Do you remember this cover photo from the annals of Colorado Track XC? Seven diminutive girls, mostly freshmen, from the upstart program at Mountain Vista, turned aside all challengers on a demanding course at the Air Academy Kadet Invitational. The team title at the 2009 Kadet Invitational was a high water mark for the program up to that point in time and an early indication of the kind of competitive performances we would come to expect from Mountain Vista on a weekly basis. 

The MV girls have come a long way since then, but the cast of characters has remained remarkably stable. Four of the six finishers on last year's state team were from the magical freshman class of 2009: Karlee Schwartzkopf, Lindsey Smith, Brooke and Brittany Mackay. I don't know what happened to Laura Londono a...