<\/p>\n
The Colorado State Track and Field Championships begin on Thursday in Lakewood, and Montezuma-Cortez, Mancos, Dolores and Dove Creek all send qualifiers.<\/p>\n
M-CHS<\/em><\/p>\n The Lady Panthers will be competing in five events, and Senior Amy Campbell is currently the highest ranked of the M-CHS athletes, sitting at No. 10 in the 100-meter dash with a qualifying time of 12.63.<\/p>\n Campbell has continued to improve all season, and she won the 100 at the Tiger Invitational in Grand Junction last weekend. She has a good shot at making the finals and winding up on the podium on Saturday.<\/p>\n Seniors Weslie Kirks and Tayla Topaha will also participate in individual events, with Kirks running in the 100-meter hurdles and Topaha throwing the discus.<\/p>\n Kirks is currently ranked No. 17 with a time of 16.10, and hurdle coach Kristi Christensen said that they are focused on getting a good start this weekend, with a goal of setting a personal record.<\/p>\n Topaha is sitting at No. 14 with a qualifying throw of 113-6, and throwing coach Daria Sparks said that they worked this week in practice on getting more aggressive with her release.<\/p>\n \u201cWe want her to make finals again like she did last year,\u201d Sparks said. \u201cShe really just wants to beat her PR of 116, and she\u2019s about three feet away, so that\u2019s the goal.\u201d<\/p>\n Finally, the Lady Panthers will send two relay teams, featuring Kirks, Campbell, Morgan Short and Anna Bullock.<\/p>\n The 4\u00d71 team snuck in at No. 18 and the 4\u00d72 relay is ranked No. 15, but with such narrow margins between the first and eighteenth seeded times, the Lady Panthers are right in the mix.<\/p>\n Mancos<\/em><\/p>\n The Blue Jays will have a strong presence in the Class 2A mid-to-long distance events this weekend.<\/p>\n Ro Paschal and Adrian Hernandez both qualified in the 800, Paschal, Hernandez and Simon Kearns will all run the 1,600 and Kearns will also compete in the 3,200.<\/p>\n Paschal also qualified in the 400 and 3,200 \u2013 and he broke the school\u2019s 3,200 record last week with a 9:51.83 \u2013 but he will not run them at state.<\/p>\n Paschal, Hernandez, Andrew Christensen and Caleb Yoder make up the Jays\u2019 qualifying 4\u00d7400 team and Paschal, Hernandez, Kearns and Jake McKie will run the 4\u00d7800.<\/p>\n Andrew Plunkett will hold down field events for Mancos, qualifying in both the high jump and triple jump.<\/p>\n The Jays have a good chance to medal in multiple events.<\/p>\n Paschal is sitting at No. 5 in the 800 and No. 3 in the mile, Plunkett is No. 5 in the triple jump, the 4\u00d74 team is ranked seventh and, after returning three members of last year\u2019s second-place 4\u00d78 team, this year\u2019s squad is currently ranked No. 4.<\/p>\n \u201cI think all of the events we qualified in are events that the athletes can make the podium (top 9) in this week,\u201d said head coach Brady Archer. \u201cAll of these athletes we are taking have proven themselves all season. They all know what they need to do to be successful at this point. Now, it\u2019s down to going out and competing.\u201d<\/p>\n Dolores<\/em><\/p>\n Dolores is the only area school to qualify both boys and girls.<\/p>\n The Bears will send Forest Pejsa, Tristen Medina, Skieler Grooms and Cael McHenry to run in the 4\u00d71, and then Medina and McHenry will each run in the 110 and 300-meter hurdles.<\/p>\n The 4\u00d71 team snuck in at No. 18, but will look to make some noise, and head coach Nick Kohler is excited to see what Medina and McHenry can do in their hurdle races.<\/p>\n Medina is currently ranked No. 11 in both events, while McHenry is sitting at No. 14 in the 110\u2019s and No. 15 in the 300\u2019s.<\/p>\n \u201cYou just keep your fingers crossed and hope that one or both of those guys will make finals in either the 110\u2019s or the 300\u2019s,\u201d Kohler said. \u201cBoth of them can, you just never know what\u2019s going to happen at state. But both of them have the potential to be all state.\u201d<\/p>\n The Lady Bears will have an even better showing, sending three relays and qualifying in five individual events.<\/p>\n Sierra Schwartz, Shavargus Noyes, Cameron Elder and Josie Bernholtz will run in the 800-meter sprint medley, Schwartz, Elder, Larissa Umberger and Noyes will run in the 4\u00d71 and Schwartz, Elder, Umberger and Bernholtz make up the 4\u00d72 team.<\/p>\n Kohler said that he believes the medley and 4\u00d71 are the strongest relays, but noted that the 4\u00d72 has the most room to improve.<\/p>\n Umberger and Schwartz also qualified as individuals in hurdle events.<\/p>\n Umberger is currently ranked No. 9 in the 100-hurdles and Schwartz sits at No. 18 in the 300\u2019s.<\/p>\n Finally, freshman Aryelle Wright qualified for the 100, 200 and 400.<\/p>\n She is currently ranked No. 12 in the 100, eighth in the 200 and sixth in the 400, and Kohler said that the longer the race, the better chance she has to claim a top spot on the podium.<\/p>\n Dove Creek<\/em><\/p>\n In Class 1A, distance events are the only events with prelims, so the Dove Creek Lady Bulldogs jump right into the finals in their three events.<\/p>\n LaRissa Randolph is the Lady Bulldogs\u2019 lone individual qualifier, and she is currently ranked sixth in the 100-meter hurdles.<\/p>\n And then Randolph joins Savannah Ayers, Kiera Baughman and Madilyn Hankins to form the Bulldogs\u2019 4\u00d74 and 4\u00d78 teams.<\/p>\n The 4\u00d74 squad is currently seeded sixth and the 4\u00d78 is 12th, but as head coach Jason Fury pointed out, anything can happen.<\/p>\n \u201cLast year, we were seeded 10th in the 4\u00d7800 and then dropped about 20 seconds and ended up 5th,\u201d he explained. \u201cSo we are hoping for similar results in that race this year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" M-CHS, Mancos, Dolores and Dove Creek athletes head to Lakewood<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":105051,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5770],"tags":[21,44,80,83],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-105050","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-cortez","tag-dolores","tag-dove-creek","tag-mancos"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105050","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=105050"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/105050\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/105051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=105050"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=105050"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=105050"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=105050"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}