{"id":37682,"date":"2022-10-25T17:38:15","date_gmt":"2022-10-25T23:38:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-madilynn-ritter-takes-youthful-jays-under-her-wing\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T02:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T08:39:11","slug":"mancos-madilynn-ritter-takes-youthful-jays-under-her-wing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-madilynn-ritter-takes-youthful-jays-under-her-wing\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos\u2019 Madilynn Ritter takes youthful Jays under her wing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mancos
Mancos senior Madilynn Ritter, right, and her teammates start out practice as they prepare for the 2A state cross-country championships.
\n(Ben Bradley\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

Search up and down the Western Slope, you\u2019d be hard-pressed to find a small-school distance running program as consistently strong as Mancos High School.<\/p>\n

Upon closer inspection \u2013 it\u2019s easy to see why.<\/p>\n

On a late fall afternoon, pairs of Bluejays stream along the dirt roads leading away from the school, gently striding through the freshly fallen leaves.<\/p>\n

With the state meet on the horizon, the Lady Jays\u2019 lone senior, Madilynn Ritter, guides an youthful program the way an elder sister looks after her siblings. For a group of talented underclassmen, Ritter\u2019s steadying influence serves as the ballast for a program that seems to restock its talent each autumn.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re some of my best friends,\u201d said Ritter. \u201cWe all depend on each other a lot, and we\u2019re very supportive of each other.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritter has consistently finished among the top three Bluejays to cross the finish line over her past couple seasons, including serving as the Jays\u2019 No. 3 runner in her junior and senior year regional races.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice to know that I can help be a leader,\u201d she said, \u201cand that I have the gist of what we\u2019re supposed to be doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sophomores Teagan Archer and Adaline Kearns have regularly finished atop the field in races across Southwest Colorado, while junior Chloe Endres has been a major cog in the Bluejays scoring pack. All of the Jays, regardless of team placement, have looked to their senior captain for guidance.<\/p>\n

The Jays program steadily improved yet again, over the course of the season \u2013 another hallmark of a successful XC team \u2013 and head coach Brady Archer credits Ritter for her role in that improvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe grew so much in her junior year about how she viewed herself as a runner,\u201d said Archer, \u201cand seeing that success made her really want to push herself even more.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritter earned a captain role in her junior year, and her role expanded even further into her senior season. \u201cShe\u2019s like another coach for us,\u201d said Archer. \u201cWe trust her to take the team through what they need to be doing, both at practices and in meets.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Mancos
Mancos senior Madilynn Ritter, right, leads her team through a light jog around the Mancos High School track.
\n (Ben Bradley\/Special to The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Bluejays took fifth at the 2A Region 4 meet, extending the lengthy tradition of at least one of the school\u2019s XC teams qualifying for the state meet.<\/p>\n

\u201cCross-country has been one of the highlights of my high school experience, so to get to run at the state meet both of my last two years has been really nice,\u201d added Ritter.<\/p>\n

Mancos finished 10th as a team at the 2A state meet in 2021, Ritter\u2019s state debut, where the then-junior took 53rd overall in the field.<\/p>\n

While she indicated that her season-best regional time of 22:36 from this past week wasn\u2019t her best race, the fact that her team advanced again to the state championships more than compensated.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe has such a strong internal drive in everything that she does,\u201d said Archer, \u201cand to see that pay off for her has been great to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ritter takes on a full plate of additional activities to supplement her student-athlete balanced lifestyle, including National Honor Society, student government, cheer and Knowledge Bowl. She\u2019s set her sights on collegiate plans beyond graduation, looking to pursue pre-med.<\/p>\n

In the short-term, one final cross-country meet in the blue-and-white has Ritter focused on bringing out her best for her teammates and for herself. Twenty of the best small schools in the state will line up on the starting line at the Norris Penrose Events Center on Saturday, Oct. 29, set to race for a state title.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re going to have good races and bad races,\u201d said Ritter of what running has meant to her, \u201cbut no matter what, I\u2019ve learned that I have to keep moving forward \u2013 not just in running, but in every part of life.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Archer credits senior for leadership as team prepares for state meet<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":37683,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[3382,28,37,29,346],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-37682","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-cross-country","tag-headlines","tag-mancos-high-school","tag-newsletter","tag-sports"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37682","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=37682"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37682\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83744,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37682\/revisions\/83744"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37683"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37682"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37682"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37682"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=37682"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}