On a pleasant morning in late October, 1986, Heidi Althoff, Tamara Madsen, Diana Madsen, Liz Graham, Rhonda Bivens, and Chelle King did in the greatest dynasty Colorado high school cross country had ever known. Contributed photo.
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The 1985 1A/2A girls cross country season ended much as the previous six seasons had ended. Lake County went home with the big trophy. The other teams assembled were left scratching their heads, wondering if there would ever be an end to Lake County's reign over small school girls cross country.
Centauri had won the inaugural 1A/2A girls state championship in 1978 but, thereafter, bragging rights had belonged to the school at nearly two miles above sea level and coached by the legendary figures of Dick Anderson (1979) and Frank Mencin (1980-85). Their run of domination had extended seven years with no end in sight.
Lake County had won big and won small over that seven-year span, but the one thing they had always done was win. And the grip the Panthers held on the state title was not slipping. 1985 had produced their largest margin of victory to date: 19 points for the Panthers to 72 for second-place Antonito. Lake County was bringing back their top two runners from the 1985 team, individual state champion Karla Stegall and fourth-place finisher Christi Boggs. It didn't figure to be a rebuilding year.
Nothing outward about the start of the 1986 season indicated that anything would be much different that it had been the last seven years. Running their home meet on its traditional second weekend of the season, Lake County dominated in a fashion little changed from years out of memory. In those days, the meet was held on the Leadville golf course, and the meet was a much bigger draw than it is now. The Lake County boys enjoyed as much reputation among the ranks of Colorado high school cross country as the girls, and top large-school teams regularly came to the meet to test themselves against the altitude and against Frank Mencin's teams.
Lake County's girls took on a strong field in 1986 and finished first. Such was their custom.
The next weekend was Liberty Bell. Liberty Bell was then much as it is today. It was the meet of the Colorado invitational season. But, as Colorado had only about half as many cross country teams then as it has now, there were only three divisions at Liberty Bell--a small-school division, plus an upper and lower division for the larger schools. In 1986, Lake County--as they often did during this time period--ran up a level to the lower division of the large schools.
Overland won the lower division race that year, but Lake County finished a very strong second. Lake County, of course, wouldn't have to contend with much-larger Overland at state.
While everything on the outside seemed unchanged from the established norms of 1A/2A girls cross country, there were wheels starting to turn in younger heads outside of Leadville. It seems that dreams were starting to take shape in places where Huskies were the mascots of choice.
In their quiet little community between Canon City and Pueblo, the Florence Huskies were fielding a team led by two freshman phenoms, Calley Nelson and Ronda Leyba. Of special note here is the fact that Nelson attended Frank Mencin's running camp in Leadville that summer. Nelson already had a passion for running, and spending a week in Leadville's thin air, running and listening to Mencin and Duane Vandenbusche share all they knew about running had done nothing to diminish her enthusiasm for the sport.
Calley Nelson Till remembers, "It was an open camp. I was part of the running crowd, so I went there. Lake County and running just went together... Coach Mencin was willing to share anything he knew about running."
Back in Florence after a week at camp and newly infused with enthusiasm for the season ahead, Nelson and Leyba went out and recruited new team members, "We were struggling to have enough for a team."
Although the preseason tally of team members remained uncertain, Nelson and Leyba didn't harbor much uncertainty about where they wanted to be at the end of the season. "We were thinking about it [the state title] from the beginning. Anything Ronda and I set out to do, we set out to win it. We didn't even have to discuss it," is Nelson's (Till's) recollection of the beginning of the season.
Meanwhile, in the community of Bailey along US-285 southwest of Denver, a mostly older set of girls was learning to dream a few dreams of their own.
The Huskies were under the tutelage of a new coach named Garry Howard. Howard had just finished a season as interim head coach in 1985 and was handed full rein over the program in 1986. Early in the season, Platte Canyon's Huskies were starting to show the telltale signs of a team on the rise.
Platte Canyon's team was led by two fiercely competitive seniors, Chelle King and Diana Madsen. King was the veteran of the two; Biles was in only her second season of cross country. Both had personalities well-suited to the size of the challenge that lay before them.
Howard recalls going to Lake County and finishing fifth, a very respectable finish for a small school in those days. He remembers even more vividly going to Liberty Bell and, like Lake County, running up in the lower division of large schools. There Platte Canyon would finish a surprising third, one place behind Lake County.
The next weekend found Platte Canyon's Huskies running, and holding their own, in the large-school division of the Bolder Boulder (yes, there was a high school cross country race by that name back in the day). Howard recalls, "By the time we got through Bolder Boulder, they were beginning to feel pretty good about themselves. They really believed in themselves."
Diana Madsen Biles offers a similar account of the transition, "I found a little index card from the beginning of that season where I had written goals. As a team we wanted to win League and District, so we must have thought we were capable of doing that, but for State we wanted to be in the top half of teams... I would say we started feeling pretty good about ourselves at Liberty Bell that year... the races were split up by classification. At some point in the season, Garry [Howard] started having us run in the 3A-4A races rather than with the smaller schools. At Liberty Bell we ran in the 3A-4A race and took third."
A little confidence, if properly tended and nourished, can go a long way.
After Liberty Bell, however, Platte Canyon was done seeing Lake County until state. There would be no more head-to-head contests by which to measure their progress.
That fall, Florence would see Lake County only at the Pikes Peak Invitational, where Nelson and Leyba would go 1-2, followed by Stegall in third. Lake County, however, would take a relatively easy team title with Florence finishing fourth. That wasn't yet enough for Florence coach Janice Dutton to start getting any ideas, "We really didn’t follow other runners or teams from around the state. We just knew that Lake County was good, had a string of state championships, and were the team to focus on for getting to state."
At Platte Canyon, the latter part of the season turned into a flurry (literally and figuratively) of success. King, Madsen, Elisabeth Graham, and Rhonda Bivens went 1-2-3-4 at their home meet. They repeated that feat in a snowstorm at Kent Denver a week or two later to run away with the Metro League title.
The Platte Canyon girls celebrate a league meet victory on Kent Denver's snowy course. Contributed photo.
Platte Canyon's district meet was held in Windsor. The course ran crossing loops, and Howard recalls with a chuckle, "Diana and Chelle actually had to stop and wait for the pack to go by to get across on one of the loops." The Huskies were dominant once again on that day, finishing 1-2-4-5 in a field of 11 complete teams (the 1A/2A division of those days had three district meets).
Lake County's road to state took them through a tougher region, one where they had to deal with the likes of Antonito and Florence. The district meet for those teams was held in Rocky Ford that year. Calley Till hints at some rising aspirations among the Florence team members heading into late season, "Some of our team hadn't run all summer, and by the end of the season they were just getting into shape." Florence was assuming the form of a team different than the one Lake County had beaten at the Pikes Peak Invitational.
Lake County won the district meet, but not without starting revealing some chinks in the armor. The margin of victory was a scant six points over Antonito, the 1985 state runner-up. Florence was somewhat less of an immediate threat in third, 13 points back. Still, that margin was narrow enough to open a window of hope for Coach Dutton, "I think we saw some vulnerability in Lake County during districts."
Adding to the pressure of state week for Lake County was a looming national record. It was widely reported in the statewide media that Lake County was chasing a then-national record of eight consecutive state championships. No small measure of mounting pressure was suggested in a quote from Frank Mencin published by the Pueblo Chieftain on the morning of the state race, "They know they have to have all cylinders working or they're not going to do it... The girls are pretty uneasy because they knew they didn't run very well [last week]. They'll be ready. They're all veterans."
Karla Stegall (Tuggle) has similar memories of Lake County's week leading up to state, "I remember the week before state being very nervous about how we were going to compete as a team and me individually. I had anemia and had been nursing plantar facilities in my left foot all season. I remember walking up a flight of stairs at the high school that week and being so tired from the anemia that I was wondering how in the world I was going to even run a warm up, much less a race that weekend. I knew both titles were on the line, and the other teams were tough. I can not remember any of us dwelling on the national record...maybe we did though. I knew with my ailments that I would have to really have to dig deep to have any results at all. So, yes, I had put pressure on myself. "
Of course, once Saturday morning actually rolled around, the time for talking and worrying about it had run its course. It was time to race. Time for Lake County to extend that streak to eight, en route to infinity and then beyond in years to come. And that's exactly what most casual observers were expecting. Why wouldn't Lake County win again?
Perhaps because two teams of Huskies had come by different ideas?
Calley Till recalls some of the morning's plan, "We knew who the top teams were--Platte Canyon, Lake County, Antonito, and Florence. We had discussed that our pack needed to be up there. Our third and fourth runners really stepped up."
Dutton's memory of Florence's state meet plan is simple, "Each girl on our team had a Lake County girl to concentrate on, keep close in the race, and pass."
Like Florence, Platte Canyon needed a top-drawer performance from every scoring runner.
A sense of excitement and anticipation ruled in the Platte Canyon camp. Biles reminisces about the morning of the race, "I would say that Rhonda Bivens probably stood out because that morning she had a bad case of nerves and kept saying that she needed to throw up. We were very concerned about her being able to keep it together, and she did. We were not very nice and told her to stick her finger down her throat and get it over with."
All of that excitement spilled over into a monster of a race.
As Biles tells the story, "Chelle and I started out front from the start of the race and must have pretty much held our positions. I remember being a little nervous that I was starting too fast because I was not in the pack at all at the start. I don't know how Liz and Rhonda's races unfolded, I worried the whole time about where they were; what was going on behind me. And when I reached the point where I just wanted to be done, I reminded myself that there was no way that I was going to be the one to let the team down."
Howard fills in what Biles had no opportunity to remember, "They basically had it won half-way through the race. When they came back over the bridge, it was over. Bivens was 13th over the bridge, and she was our fourth runner."
Writing for the Denver Post, Phil Lammers added, "midway through the race, they [Platte Canyon] had four girls ahead of the third Panther runner." And Platte Canyon did nothing to relinquish that position of advantage in the second half of the race.
And, while not every Florence runner had passed her designated Lake County counterpart, the Florence Huskies had made enough passes to climb into second. The final team tally showed: Platte Canyon 28, Florence 44, Lake County 45. Antonito had the look of a team that may have spent themselves in the district effort, finishing fifth with 65 points.
On the very cusp of achieving national notoriety, Lake County had fallen. Not to one team only, but to two--not that that part of it mattered much.
Dealing with the disappointment of the day was an extended process for Tuggle, "I think we were all very aware of the title that went down that day. I wonder, though, if we all realized it more later in life... I do remember the girls team being pretty down on the bus ride home. Several of us had not had a good race. I remember trying hard to focus on the positives of the day...some of our guys had good races."
Mencin told the Denver Post, "I thought we were ready, but we weren't. Platte Canyon just wanted it more than our girls did. It was their day."
Tuggle adds, "Mr. Mencin was good at not being down on us, although I am sure he was very down."
The process of dealing with it was simpler for Nelson and her Florence teammates, "We just reset our goals."
Indeed they did. Nelson and Leyba would lead Florence to the state title both of the next two years before slipping to fourth place as seniors. Ronda Leyba's younger sister Annette would lead Florence to another second-place finish in 1990. Janice Dutton would coach a total of nine very successful seasons at Florence.
The post script was not as happy for Platte Canyon or Lake County.
At Platte Canyon, Madsen and King graduated that spring, with King going on to run as a walk-on for the University of Colorado. Rhonda Bivens would be injured for the state meet her next two years. None of the girls of that team would see another state title, and none ever finished in the medals outside of that day. Garry Howard would continue coaching at Platte Canyon through the 2004 season before retiring and moving to someplace warmer than Bailey. His 2003 girls team would finish second at state, but Platte Canyon--though perennially among the state's top 3A teams in later years of Howard's career--would never again win a state title.
Lake County, with Stegall returning for her senior season in 1987, would finish third that year and second in 1988 before winning again in 1989. Frank Mencin would leave Lake County following the 1990-91 school year to take an administrative position in Summit County. To this date, 1989 remains the last state title won by the Lake County girls.
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Note: A huge thanks to Janice Dutton, Garry Howard, Diana Biles, Calley Till, and Karla Tuggle for their willingness to share the story, each from his or her own perspective. Garry Howard was a much-admired colleague for me from when I broke into the coach ranks. I met with up with Calley Till and Diana Biles largely because of their daughters' current accomplishments in cross country. I had to do a little digging to find Karla Tuggle and Janice Dutton for the telling of their parts of this story, and I am very pleased to have their voices represented in the telling of the story. Photos were supplied from the personal collection of Diana Biles.
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1986 1A/2A State Meet Girls Team Scores - Platte Canyon 28, Florence 44, Lake County 45, Manitou Springs 59, Antonito 65, Lamar 128, Centauri 141, Clear Creek 146, Steamboat Springs 150, Fort Lupton 166, Palisade 172, Denver Lutheran 176, Delta 177
Individuals:
1. (1) Calley Nelson, Florence, 17:54
2. Cruz Zarco, Sargent, 18:07