For the first time in the same season, Montezuma-Cortez, Mancos and Dolores will each send runners to the Colorado High School State Cross-Country Championships.
The three schools met in Delta on Friday for their respective regional races, and starting things off, the Mancos Blue Jays ran away with the Class 2A Region 4 Cross-Country Championship to qualify for state as a team.
With Simon Kearns (16:42.88) and Jake McKie (16:59.98) finishing in fourth and fifth place, respectively, and Teslin Stecher (17:08.22) crossing the finish line in seventh, the Jays finished with a team score of 15, which was 18 points ahead of the second place Hotchkiss Bulldogs.
Finishing in 15th, Mancos junior Caleb Yoder (17:46.45) would have qualified for state as an individual even if the Jays hadn’t dominated as a group.
And then Ryoya Shima (17:58.15) was 18th, Zane Wilson (19:05.96) finished 33rd, Alex Fleitz (19:52.38) was 40th and Brandon Sehnert (21:22.67) finished 52nd to round out the Mancos boys.
Mixed in with top-finishing Mancos runners was Dolores sophomore Phillip Hufman (17:37.11), who finished in 11th place to become the first Dolores runner to qualify for state in the program’s five-year history.
In its regional preview, ColoradoTrackXC had Hufman projected to finish 26th, but the sophomore gutted out a fantastic race to set a new personal record by nearly a full minute and advance to state.
“This is the first year we’ve got someone going to state,” Dolores head coach Nick Kohler said excitedly. “He’s just a sophomore – Phillip Hufman – and by the time that kid’s a senior he’s going to be a stud.”
Brennan Hite (18:10.97) narrowly missed the cut for the Bears, finishing in 21st, and then Alex Olson (21:06.06) battled carsickness to finish 48th.
After the Class 2A boys race, the Mancos Lady Jays took home a third-place finish in the Class 2A Region 4 girls event to punch their ticket to the state championships.
Emma Most (21:33.05) and Kaylee Rose (21:48.96) led the team with 11th and 12th place finishes, respectively, and Hannah Skinner (22:36.98) rounded out the team scoring in 20th.
And then Jessalyn Bay-Voit (23:00.96) was 23rd for the Jays, Hakayla Snow (23:51.07) finished 27th, Olivia Coppinger (24:42.32) placed 32nd and Mimi Archuleta (26:08.13) finished 40th.
Looking at projections earlier in the week, head coach Brady Archer expected that his team would be in a close contest for the final state qualifying position. But instead of just sneaking in, the Lady Jays finished in third and were just seven points away from second-place Paonia.
“We had talked about the type of races that they needed to have today in order to just get into that fourth spot,” he explained. “But then we talked about how close second, third and fourth were, and that we could move up even. And they ran even better than we hoped and ended up third and close to second.”
Moving up a class, M-CHS senior Josh Ramos (16:38.68) and junior Caisey Duran (20:35.27) each finished in the top 15 of their races and will represent the Panthers at state.
Ramos, who was projected to finish in 10th, ran a new PR to finish seventh.
“Josh was committed to this all summer,” said M-CHS head coach Paul Koops. “This was what Josh talked about, this was what Josh worked hard at – and today you see the results. It’s really sweet to see him achieve that goal.”
Duran’s performance was more of a surprise – although a very pleasant one.
In just her first cross-country season, she was projected to finish 36th. But the Cortez junior ran two minutes and 23 seconds faster than she ever had to finish ninth.
“That girl is maybe one of the most competitive kids I’ve coached,” said Koops. “She doesn’t know how not to give 100 percent. Given how new she is to the sport, it’s really wonderful.”
“I think it’s really special for us to be taking two kids to state,” he continued. “It just says some really good things about those two kids, and it says some good things about our team as a whole. We had a really, really good group of kids this year.”
Other M-CHS finishers were, for the boys, Ben Castillo-Calvillo (58th), Will Brown (70th), Mike Vanik (85th), Marcus Amrine (96th), Blair Rice (97th), and David Vanik (110th).
And then for the girls, Sam Bagge (40th), Regina Schuster (48th), Emma Thissen (71st), Lynda LaPaz (88th), Corinne Damore (92nd) and Maya LaMunyon (95th) rounded out the Panthers runners.
The state qualifiers will travel to Colorado Springs next weekend for their respective races. Competing at the Norris Penrose Event Center, Duran will run at 10 a.m., Ramos will race at 11:20 a.m., the Mancos boys will start at 12:40 p.m. and the Mancos girls will close things out at 2 p.m.
