COLORADO SPRINGS — Anyone familiar with cross country in Colorado already knows it as a given that Mountain Vista will be in the hunt, and typically the favorite, for the 5A Boys state title. Probably nobody knows that better than Rock Canyon, a team that brought a healthy and abiding respect for Mountain Vista with them to this year’s state meet.
Rock Canyon owns the singular distinction of sharing a long attendance boundary with Mountain Vista and an even longer history of lining up somewhere, anywhere behind Mountain Vista in the state meet standings.
One part of that distinction fell apart today as the Jaguars took down Mountain Vista for the school’s first-ever state cross country county title. In the final team standings, only nine points separated Rock Canyon from their next-door rivals. But it’s difficult to conceive there’s a bigger nine points to be found anywhere in Rock Canyon school history, in any sport.
Today’s new ending to the story wrote its final sentence when senior Tait Jensen crossed the finish line in 57th to wrap up the Rock Canyon scoring. It took a while, however, before anyone could read that final sentence. The scoring was simply too close for anyone to make anything beyond a tentative guess at the winner before the computer crunched the numbers. There is, to date, no fully live scoreboard in cross country. All that led to several minutes of very exhausted young men holding their breath in hope and bewilderment.
Last year, Rock Canyon came into the state meet on the heels of a stellar performance at the regional meet. They sensed they could come out on top again at state, but the pieces fell apart, and the Jaguars went home stung by the defeat.
“This year, we had a bone to pick. This summer, the vibe for Rock Canyon was different,” explained senior leader Brady Hill, referring to the shared understanding among cross country types that championships are largely won and last not in the fall but in the summer. “We won league. We won regionals. We knew this was the last box to check. Before the race everything felt right. We were nervous, but we were confident. The biggest thing is we said, ‘We’re racing for each other,” which I think we did 100%.”
The trio up front of Hill, Owen Whitney, and Jack D’Souza did the biggest damage with three top 20 finishes. Senior Jackson West rolled to a 26th-place finish before Jensen finished the deal.
If there was anyone more overjoyed by the outcome than the Rock Canyon team, it may have Rock Canyon coach Dan Davies, “I’m overwhelmed. They’re such a great group of young men. They earned this… I’m speechless-which is hard to believe!”
Reflecting on the school’s history of frustration against Mountain Vista, Davies laughed, “Coach Dalby and I are good friends, and finally he gets to come over and shake my hand.” That shaking of hands and mutual congratulations did take place, leaving a profound sense of this-is-exactly-how-sport-should-be among those who witnessed it.
While the individual title didn’t fall to either Rock Canyon or Mountain Vista, it did manage to stay in Douglas County.
Three years of frustration, peppered with an extended rash of injuries, came to an end today for Chaparral senior Brennan Draper. Running shoulder-to-shoulder with Mountain Vista junior Benjamin Anderson at the creek crossing, Draper found another gear in the final 400 meters to claim a margin of victory of nearly five seconds.
Draper explained his thinking coming out of the creek, “I just gotta get up the hill fast, get a few fast feet, keep up the rhythm, and then I’m golden.” Anderson, among the best the state has ever seen, couldn’t summon a pace to match Draper’s burst to the finish line. Draper would end up winning in 15:14.4, four seconds off the course record.