The Glenwood Springs boys and girls cross country teams garnered third-place finishes in Saturday morning’s home Demon Invitational Meet held at Stubler Memorial Field and on the Rio Grande Trail.
Running the 5K (3.1-mile course), two front range schools in Heritage and Chaparral took top honors for the day, with Heritage coming out on top in the boys race with a total of 24 points to Chaparral’s 31-point total. On the girls end of things, the places were reversed but equally as close with Chaparral scoring 31 points and Heritage finishing narrowly behind with 32 points.
The home meet, run on a beautiful autumn morning, served more as a tune-up and training run for both Demon teams as next Friday’s meet at Delta is the focus for Glenwood at this point in the season.
“We held some people back today, especially on the girls side of things,” said Justin Baum, Glenwood’s head coach. “Running together as a pack was kind of the focus of this meet.”
Even though the Demon girls did run together for the race’s first two miles, freshman Sophia Connerton-Nevin cut loose from the pack as the finish line neared and managed to make up ground on a good portion of the field, as the talented freshman finished fourth overall with a time of 20 minutes, 11 seconds.
“Today was fun, but we do have some injuries on the team, so we were just using this race as a tempo run,” Connerton-Nevin said.
Ella Johnson, Alexa Helms, and Sophia Vigil all came across the finish line together for the Demons at 22:12, placing them 21st, 22nd, and 23rd on the day.
Rounding out Glenwood’s finishers for the ladies was Matilda Barth (22:15), Alicia Lowe (22:20), Maya Elias (22:22), Maria Carlson (22:54), Emma Barsness (24:08), Eleanor Kaufman (25:43), Annika Bucchin (25:54), Molly Hancock (29:53), and Isabel Rattin (29:59).
The top finisher for the Glenwood boys was Will Berkheimer with a time of 18:13. Right in Berkheimer’s shadow with the same time of 18:13 was Demon Quinn MacPherson. Alec Nykerk (19:28), Vincent Fass (20:29), Owen Mangeot (20:59), Ale Angeles (20:59), William Hassell (21:00), Noah Fosnaught (21:00), Taber Uyehara (21:02), Sebastian Aragon (23:00), and Thomas Barton (23:16) rounded out Glenwood’s scoring.
“The boys ran tough today. They did an awesome job of running as a pack,” Baum said.
Rifle’s Jonathan Hernandez, a two-time state qualifier for the Bears, ran a personal best of 17:47 to finish in 17th place. In the girls race, Karisa Coombs had a personal record time of 21:44 for the Bears to finish in 18th-place overall.
“We came into this meet hoping to set some personal records and we got them,” said Kyle Mickelson, Rifle’s head coach.
The Rifle boys finished in fourth place on the day.
Top finishers for the Coal Ridge boys and girls were freshman Tyler Parker who finished 27th overall at 18:16. Araceli Ayala hit the finish line at 21:58, placing 20th for the Lady Titans. The Coal Ridge boys and girls both finished in fifth place for the meet’s team scoring.
Grand Valley High School saw Bailey Hoyt finish in 36th place for the girls at 24:58, and Nikolai Stammer ran a 19:16, good for 35th overall in the boys race.
In the middle school portion of the Demon Invite, Glenwood Middle School 7th-grade phenom Benny Swanson once again ran a good distance away from the field to record an impressive victory in the 2-mile middle school distance.
