COLORADO SPRINGS – The dream is now a reality for Cheyenne Mountain High School’s Raegan McRae.

The junior used an impressive finishing kick to pass Summit’s Kayla Broecker to capture her first career state championship by winning the Class 4A cross country title Saturday at the Norris Penrose Event Center.
McRae clocked an 18:05.9-second time on the 3.1-mile course to edge Broecker who came across the line in 18:06.4.

“I knew I was going to have to push really hard to win that last mile and I knew she was right behind me, and I knew I would have to kick really hard into the finish,” said the 5-foot-1 McRae. “I knew I had it in me to do this. I was very confident and I’m really happy I was able to accomplish this.”

McRae was still trying to digest the fact that she reached the top of the 4A summit.

“This is incredible,” McRae said. “I remember at the start of my season my coach said, ‘Are you ready to win this state title?’ I was like whoa, whoa what are you talking about. I kept working day after day during the season and I built up my confidence up until I got to this race.

“We train a lot on this course during the regular season. We knew what we had to do to win this and I’m glad I was able to get it done. This feels so amazing. I’ve dreamed of this for a really long time and I’m just so grateful.”

In the 4A girls team race, Timnath claimed team supremacy for the second year in a row with a 107 total. Battle Mountain came in second at 122 points.

Timnath claimed the 4A title as Izz Schimmel Pfenning, (seventh place, 19:04.8); Louisa Stribley (19th, 19:43.0); Annie Fowler (20th, 19:43.4); Shayla Miller (Addison Geraets (28th, 20:06.4); and Paige Barlow (33rd, 20:15.8) scored for the team. Timnath is only in its fourth year of existence.

“We ended up with four of the same seven from last year racing (Saturday),” Timnath coach Matt Miltenberg said. “I will say defending (a state title) is very challenging and one of the things we talk about all the time is a lot of teams can win when everything goes perfectly and really, really good teams can win when things are going wrong and people have to step up. Today, we had some girls who had phenomenal seasons and things were not going well and some other girls stepped up tremendously and ran incredible races. They really saved it for us.”