Tucker Hamilton and Claire Rachwitz made it 2-for-2 for Rampart at this morning's Run for Rwanda. Photos by Alan Versaw.
It would be easy to overanalyze the results of this morning's Run for Rwanda at Cottonwood Creek Park in Colorado Springs, but there was certainly nothing for Rampart High School to go home feeling badly about.
Although they took different paths to get there, Rampart seniors Tucker Hamilton and Claire Rachwitz nailed down the individual titles at the race. For Hamilton, it was a matter of sustaining his pace until he broke the last vestiges of competition. Hamilton took over the lead at about two miles and then cruised in to a 17-second margin of victory with a 16:35. TCA's Conner Wilburn passed Liberty's Ben Schneiderman late in the race to take runner-up honors among the high school competitors in the race.
Rachwitz, on the other hand, started very quickly, leaving the impression she was going to hold pace with all but the top three or four guys in the field. While Rachwitz's pace slowed a little in later stages of the race, her early margin was big enough to withstand a late closing bid by Lauren Hamilton (no relation to Tucker Hamilton) of TCA. Rachwitz ran 20:33 to Hamilton's 20:40. Rounding out the top four for high school girls were Brianne Hoglin and Maddie Mullen of TCA.
The Run for Rwanda has much more of a cross country than road race kind of feel and so provides a nice preseason barometer for where fitness stands for the many high school athletes who participate. The course is about half crushed rock trail with substantial segments of concrete sidewalk and shorter stretches of grass. Despite pleasantly cool and overcast conditions, the race did not run especially fast this morning, but that's not all that surprising given where most high school teams are in their training cycle at this point in time.
While Rampart and TCA had the largest contingents of high school athletes in the race, Air Academy, Liberty, Collegiate Academy, and Pikes Peak Christian had representatives in the race as well.