The Desert Vista boys took their show to California this weekend, facing some of the top boys teams in the nation. Photo by Margot Kelly.
Two major meets and a handful of other telling meets waged in four of our five states give us the fodder for this week's analysis. Without wasting and further time on preliminaries, here we go...
Nevada
There were no major meets in Nevada that I can find under my microscope. It appears as if all the Nevada schools who wanted a big meet atmosphere made a run for the California border. A cursory look at the California results I've been able to dig up shows nothing of special importance from the Nevada schools. The closest result to that would be Centennial's girls finishing 15th of 19 teams in the Sweepstakes race at Woodbridge. While that's a pretty tough field to be in, we'll need to look for other showings from Centennial to give us a clearer read on their regional competitiveness.
But, I've been known to miss things before, so please let me know if I have missed something in Nevada. I'll confess right now, Nevada presents the greatest challenges of excavation when finding results from the Southwest region.
Arizona
Southwest XC Challenge - This meet was actually held in Durango, Colorado, but Page was the team of greatest interest to the region present at this meet. The Page girls escaped with a relatively narrow win over the Durango girls (a solid team by all counts, but not widely regarded as one of the top teams in the state). Note that in the actual meet scoring, Durango beat Page in the girls race, but that was with scoring four runners. I've taken the liberty of "scoring" five runners for the purposes of this analysis. In that case, Page wins. The Page boys took a more decisive win in their half of the race.
Four Corners Cross Country Invitational - Page bypassed this one to go to Durango, leaving the Tuba City boys to have their way with the field in Flagstaff. Tuba City continues to make a very strong case for NXR-SW consideration. The Flagstaff girls won their side of the meet, but without anything resembling the domination waged by Tuba City among the boys. So far, Flagstaff hasn't shown what they showed last year at the NXR-SW meet.
Desert Vista's boys traveled to Woodbridge (CA) to take part in the sweepstakes race there. They came back 11th of 21 teams. Some of those 21 teams are among the very best of the nation, but it's a little difficult to discern exactly where that field of 21 starts to soften. Regional credibility would certainly attach to this result, but perhaps not yet regional notoriety. We'll keep a close eye on further results from Desert Vista, though.
Other than these meets, things seem to have been fairly quiet across the Grand Canyon State, so we move to New Mexico, where things were about equally as quiet.
New Mexico
In New Mexico, most eyes are currently on Los Alamos. And that would be a dual gender distinction for the Hilltoppers. It can be a little unnerving to know people are watching you as you sleep, but such are the costs of celebrity status.
Since both Los Alamos and Cleveland were sleeping (idle), we are left to focus on the St. Pius X and Eldorado girls and the Laguna-Acoma boys
Unfortunately, I can't produce meet results from either of the meets these teams went to. We do know the St. Pius X girls went to Jemez Valley and won, 30 - 90 over the second place team. The Laguna-Acoma boys were similarly convincing, winning 20 - 62 over the second place team. In other words, neither team faced much in the way resistance.
As an aside, L-A may be the best cross country school in the Southwest region on a per-student basis. They just may be one of the top five boys teams in New Mexico, and it would be fun to see them in a large school meet. That, however, won't happen until the Albquerque Academy Invitational on September 28.
We also know the Eldorado girls ran a little short-handed at the Atrisco Heritage meet and finished fourth. Individual results are not available for that meet.
Colorado
Liberty Bell - In Colorado, that ruckus you heard on Friday afternoon was the Liberty Bell Invitational in Littleton, a burb on the south side of Denver. Fairivew reestablished their preeminence over every boys team in Colorado except Mountain Vista (MV mostly rested their regulars at a different meet). Cheyenne Mountain looked very good in Division 2, but not good enough yet to rival Fairview's Knights. Fort Collins and Boulder were a moderately surprising second and third in the Division 1 boys race. Both of those results represent the high water mark for those two teams thus far this season.
The bouncing ball better known as the Fort Collins girls took on, and disposed of, all comers at this meet. With Erin Hooker and Devynn Miller back in the lineup, there would be no running down of the Lambkins. Monarch acquiesced. Fairview acquiesced. Everybody acquiesced on this day. The only whimper of protest came from Pine Creek. The Pine Creek Eagles won the Division 2 race and won with a star runner sitting out her last meet of varsity ineligibility due to a school transfer between her junior and senior years. When Heather Bates joins the varsity roster, Pine Creek just might have the horsepower to chase Fort Collins and Monarch.
The Thompson Valley and Battle Mountain girls had nice races to help set up a great 4A state showdown in a little over a month, but nobody in Colorado's 4A division appears to be ready yet to do serious battle with the top 5A girls teams.
As usual, times coming out of Liberty Bell were other-worldly and should not be confused with performances from a conventional cross country course.
For this week, we'll take Liberty Bell as the only meet of consequence in Colorado so far as the state's top NXR-SW contenders are concerned. There are teams from Colorado that will contend for championship race berths that were not at Liberty Bell, but none of those teams were in meets that provided very stiff tests of how solid they really are. So, we'll wait for other opportunities to discuss those teams.
Utah
BYU Autumn Classic - We've been waiting for a while for a rematch of the American Fork-Davis showdown. The Cavemen took round one in an unconventional format on their own home course back in August. In round two on Friday, American Fork prevailed again, this time on a neutral course and with conventional scoring. And it wasn't really very close. In a seven-team invitational field, American Fork outpointed the Darts, 36 - 63.
On the girls side of things, Davis was in a different zip code, easily turning back very good teams from Ogden and American Fork. We've seen the American Fork girls coming, but maybe didn't realize just how close they were. Ogden now knows very well how close American Fork is. The Tigers edged American Fork for second by a single point.
There isn't much cross country season left in Utah for teams of different classifications to go head-to-head such as Friday's Invitational races provided, so get your clues while you can.
The varsity races at the BYU Autumn Classic provided Timpanogos a nice opportunity to shine, but this team probably rates behind Davis, American Fork, Herriman, and Mountain View at this point. Very possibly Bonneville as well. The Utah ladder is a tough one to climb.
Royal Run - Bingham's boys destroyed everyone at this meet, but none of the schools mentioned in the preceding paragraph were there. Bingham's girls destroyed everyone at this meet, but a similar story applies there as well.
Herriman Invitational - After running a series of very fast courses at other schools' meets, Herriman invited everyone over for their own little sufferfest on Friday. None of the teams that figure to give Herriman a good, stiff challenge showed up. Herriman won both team titles with relative ease.