COLORADO SPRINGS — Cherry Creek senior Riley Stewart left no doubt in the opening race of the cross country state champions Saturday morning at Norris Penrose Events Center.
Stewart captured her third straight Class 5A girls state cross country individual title with an impressive time of 17 minutes, 20.9 seconds. Her time was a full 27 seconds ahead of Valor junior Brooke Wilson.
“Obviously, I wanted to improve on last year,” Stewart said of her time that was 13 seconds faster than her junior run at state. “I wanted to come in strong to get this three-peat. To beat my time from last year was pretty nice.”
The future Stanford University runner capped off one of the most impressive high school cross country careers in Colorado. It was something that Stewart didn’t even believe she would accomplish after placing 5th as a freshman.
“I would never have expected after freshman year I would be in this situation,” Stewart said. “I’m just so grateful to keep on running in college. I’m super grateful for that.”
Stewart will compete in a few national cross country races before turning her attention to the Colorado track state season in the spring. The Bruins did finish a little short of defending their team title. Arapahoe placed its top five runners in the top-16 to score 53 points. Cherry Creek was the state runner-up with 67 points.
“It means so much. We won freshman year and we were really hoping to take it home today,” Arapahoe junior Emily Lamontagne said. “My team is amazing. Would couldn’t have done this without our entire team.”
Lamontagne placed third and her junior teammate Ava Mitchell took fourth to guide the Warriors back atop the team podium. Mitchell placed fourth last year too.
“Our class if very competitive,” Lamontagne said of the junior class across 5A. “Competing against them is great.”
Of the top-10 individual players in the 5A girls race, six were juniors along with one freshman. The only three seniors that finished in the top-10 were Stewart, Douglas County’s Aidyn Woodall and Fruita Monument’s Jadyn Heil.
