5A Girls Track and Field: Two Rock Canyon Titles Tightens Team Race

Petra McGowan’s measure of success for herself is improvement.

So not winning the Class 5A girls high jump would have been fine with the Rock Canyon junior, as long she moved forward.

Fortunately for McGowan, both growth and a championship came together on Friday afternoon at Jefferson County Stadium, as she jumped higher than she ever had at the state meet — 5 feet, 6 inches — and brought home her first title.

“For me, it’s never about the place that I get, it’s always about the personal improvement and getting the best marks I can,” McGowan said. “Getting first is amazing and it is a great honor, but more than anything, I just want to keep jumping higher heights.”

McGowan was one of nine jumpers who cleared 5 feet, 3 inches — the height that was her best at state meets as a freshman and sophomore — but as the bar went higher, only she and Valor Christian senior Farrah Eike remained.

Eike won last season’s state title and McGowan was one of two jumpers who tied for second. This season, they both were successful at 5-5, but Eike was unable to match McGowan’s clearance of 5-6.

Alone and with the championship assured, McGowan had the bar set at 5-8 1/2 — which would have given her the Rock Canyon school record — but she was unable to clear it on three attempts.

“We’ll get it next year,” McGowan said.

McGowan’s championship was satisfying and it gave her another elevated spot on the medal podium after she placed third in the long jump Thursday, all while battling an ankle injury. She’ll finish up the state meet by running a leg in the 4×100 meter relay Saturday after she helped the Jaguars finish third in prelims.

Rock Canyon’s highlights didn’t end there, as it also added a state championship in the 800 meter sprint medley relay, which helped it move into second place – behind Mountain Vista – in the 5A team standings going into the final day.

The Jaguars’ team of Ella Bendle, Sasha Naushad, Megan Witkiewicz and Lillian Oakes ran a time of 1 minute, 45.83 seconds, to the 1:45.99 of Legacy. Ralston Valley ran 1:46.72 to finish in third place.

Ralston Valley sits third in the team standings and 20 of those points have now come from senior thrower Mary Ella Brooks, who claimed her second individual state championship in as many days.

Brooks won the discus on Thursday, then led for the majority of Friday’s shot put competition before securing the state title. She took the lead with just her second throw of preliminaries, but put it out of reach with her first throw of the finals when she uncorked an effort of 40 feet, 8 1/2 inches. Behind Brooks in the standings was runner-up McKenna George (a first-year thrower) and her Eaglecrest teammate, Kaitlyn Hendrian.

In the first individual championship final of the day on the track, Denver East junior Rosie Mucharsky defended last season’s state championship in the 800 meters, as she pulled away late to win in 2 minutes, 10.37 seconds, with Boulder’s Kiki Vaughn second and Mountain Vista’s Keeghan Edwards third.

Murcharsky fell short of her PR — the 2:09.57 she ran at last year’s state meet — but she didn’t focus at all on time and just on the joy of racing.

“I was definitely a little bit stressed going into the race,” Mucharsky said. “I hadn’t run the 800 that much this season and hadn’t really done as I hoped. This is such an unreal environment and all the people I was racing are my friends, so it was amazing to win.”

Mucharsky finished seventh in the 1,600 meters last season, but comes into Saturday’s final as the No. 2 seed, with a season-best time that is just 0.10 of a second slower than Air Academy’s Bethany Michalak, the 3,200 meter champion.
Another repeat state champion — a three-peat, in fact — came from Eaglecrest in the 4×200 meter relay. Junior Jaylynn Wilson ran legs of title-winning teams for the Raptors in each of her first two seasons and added another when she combined with sophomore Tatum Gratrix, senior Anaya Ewing and freshman Zenobia Witt to bring home gold.

The Raptors crossed the finish line in 1 minute, 40.42 seconds, with Cherry Creek and Ponderosa taking second and third in a virtual dead head.

“Every year I’ve been out here, I’ve been able to compete with a bunch of great girls, both on my team and on the track,” Wilson said. “This was the bar that we set for ourselves my freshman year and each year we just come back and try to do better than we did the last year.”