A State Champion - 1993 - 1994

The obvious highlight of the 93 - 94 competitive year was when Leilani won the first state championship of any kind in school history. Remember Leilani? She was the young lady who didn't want to throw. It was such an exciting competition at the state meet, the girl from Denver South was the favorite and best in the state all year. In the finals she was leading after her first throw. On Melissa's final throw she moved into first place with just Leilani and the South girl to throw. Leilani stepped in and threw good enough to take the lead and move Melissa to second. Then the South girl threw and didn't improve giving the Stallion ladies 1st and 2nd. It was an amazing performance by both of them.

Leilani and Melissa are two of the throwers that I have followed each of their seasons. Along with Donna they finished 1st, 2nd and 4th at the regional championship meet. In addition to that Coach Garretson had a male thrower, Vince who was 2nd at state in the discus. The four of them had outstanding careers as throwers under Garretson's guidance.

The cross country scrimmage with Ponderosa once again provided some indicators of the type of season we might have. The girls lost a by a 27-30 score while the boys were beaten by a perfect score of 15-50 by not placing anyone in the top 7. A positive for the boys though was the fact that their 1-5 split time was on 1:38. Our goal was always 1:00 or better so starting at 1:38 was good. The negative is that the split time was based on slow times so we had a lot of work to do if we had any chance of being competitive. The girl's pack time was 2:39 and would get worse before it would get better because unlike recent years there was consistently a 1:00 time gap between our #1 and #2 runners.

The season turned out to be a typical season if there is such a thing. We had some successes with the girls' team winning the Cheyenne Mountain, Falcon and Rangeview invitationals and Cassandra placing top 10 in every meet through region. And we also had some low points where the girls demonstrated a lack of the kind of commitment that we knew was necessary if we were going to return to state. This lack of commitment came to a head at the Coronado Invitational when we were beaten by teams that we had beat all season and other teams in our region finished close enough to us to instill them with a new confidence that we could be beat. The athletes themselves gave me the ammunition I needed to question their commitment when one of them showed up on the bus on the way to the meet passing out donuts. When I called them on it they thought it was funny.

After the meet I wrote specifically to the girl who brought the donuts, "Somehow the donuts didn't seem as funny when you were holding your side during the race. The places lost just from the top four in the 2nd half of the race would have been enough to beat Wasson. Something to think about".

That was also the meet where Richard, a senior new to our school ran his first race and became our #1 runner on the boy's team. He ran the 9th fastest time in school history. What was encouraging was the fact that we ran a 1:27 1-5 split. One of the things hurting our boy's team was the fact that we had the least number of runners that we've had for several seasons. We didn't even have enough to field two teams.

At the next meet in Pueblo the 13 of the 14 kids had personal bests and the girls finished 2nd. Unfortunately even with PRs and a 1:30 1-5 and a 1:42 season best 1-7 split the boys only finished 15th out of 23 scoring teams. We worked hard and improved but we just weren't very good.

"A TEAM EXISTS ONLY WHEN EACH MEMBER UNDERSTANDS HIS/HER ACTIONS AFFECT EVERYONE ELSE".

"Saturday it looked as though the girls have finally figured that out. Each of the 7 made up her mind to compete from the time the gun went off until she entered the chute and she did it. If you ladies will continue to compete like that and continue to realize that you don't let up no matter where you are in the field, you'll put yourself in a position to allow yourselves a return to state for the 4th year in a row.

We talked about the importance of each of you RACING throughout the race, no matter what place you were in or where you were on the course and each of you did that. Remember, on the bus I told you that last year the difference between a team Rampart and us was that they raced and we only ran. Well yesterday you raced, all 7 of you and that's why we were 2nd in a field of 28 teams".

The week before the region meet we had another good total team performance at Rangeview on a very challenging course. The girls won and the guys were 3rd. Initially we were presented the combined champions trophy again but one of our kids realized that it had been scored wrong and pointed it out to me. Rangeview actually beat us by 7 points so we gave the trophy back.

"While I'm doing combined score I want to tell you again how proud I am of you for the fact that you pointed out that we shouldn't have been presented the trophy and the way you showed so much class when you went up and gave it back. Good job"!

For the 4th year in a row the girls qualified for state and typically for Sierra, none of the seniors were who qualified for state had even been on the team for all 4 years. Our only 4 year letter winners this year were Desiree who was our #9 runner at region and Jeremy our #3 male runner at region.

State Championship Meet - 1993 Pueblo City Park

Instability reared its ugly head again in the '94 track season. Looking back at the '93 season we had one of the best young sprinter - jumpers that I had coached. She was what I considered a complete sprinter because she was successful in all three sprints, the 100, 200 and 400 as well as an outstanding long jumper. She wasn't just outstanding on our team, she was named Girl's Track and Field Athlete of the Year by the Gazette Telegraph that year. I won't rehash why her season ended badly in '93 but unfortunately it was an indication of what we might have expected from her in her sophomore season. So how did her sophomore play out? The returning Athlete of the Year? She quit after competing in 2 meets. She didn't compete in the scrimmage or our first meet because she didn't have enough practices.

We won that first meet with 98 points over runner up Harrison 70, County 68. Combined with our boys team we also won the coed championship over Harrison 198 - 150. The girls' post meet newsletter said, "An outstanding TOTAL TEAM EFFORT, I'll keep referring to total team effort all year because that's what makes our program successful year in and year out. People not only doing what they're expected to do but filling in other areas when they're asked to.

Just a few examples from yesterday: Jada running on the 4 x 200 and coming back 1 event later and running the 200 leg on the winning medley when someone else had to pull out with an injury; Shawna and Amanda filling in for two people on the 4 x 400 even though the race meant nothing in team score and Nina agreeing to run on the 2nd place 4 x 800  when she heard that Shana was sick even though Nina had been sick four days herself. It's efforts like that that will make this team another in a long list of winning Sierra girls track teams".

In our next meet, a relay only meet at Cherry Creek our '93 AOY helped us win with 111 points over the host team Cherry Creek 110 and six others. She long jumped and they set a school and meet record, she anchored the meet record setting 4 x 100 and anchored the 1st place medley relay team. We finished 2nd in the 4 x 400 relay but she anchored with a 68.5 the slowest split on the team. (She had run 61.0 on the medley). It certainly looked like she was going to have another dominant season. Our next meet was cancelled because of weather and then we had 3 meets scheduled so we could get as many kids involved as possible. She was scheduled to compete in two of them but only competed in one. So how did that meet go? The team finished 3rd just 4 points ahead of rival Harrison. And the AOY? She anchored the 4 x 200 where we were disqualified on her exchange and she dropped out of the 200 with a "strain". She didn't do any of her other events. Among the negatives discussed in the result sheet was a reference to her, "One of your team showed up without any shoes except spikes, no uniform top and wet sweats. Track is 90% preparation ladies and too many of you aren't preparing". That was the last time she ever competed for us.

And the team? They went on without her. They won the freshman/sophomore meet in Pueblo that she was supposed to run in with 156 points, 2nd was South with 89. Then they won a league quad with 126 with County finishing 2nd with 68. While they didn't win the Glenn Peterson Invitational at Air Academy they finished a strong 2nd to Rampart 155 - 117 with Harrison finishing 3rd with 75. After the meet I wrote:

"Ladies I could spend time talking about some of the negatives yesterday but I'd rather focus on the positives. If you were involved in a negative you know who you are and only you can do what is necessary to change things back to positive.

Positives: Placing in 17 of 18 events; Having both hurdlers in both finals for the first time that any of us can remember and they scored 12 points; Theresa, Leilani and Elena winning three field events; several of you had personal bests and improved on the all time and class lists and finally, a large number of you were going to prom but you still stuck around to the very end and did everything we asked of you. Thanks. Hopefully it's the type of commitment that will bring you another District Championship.

Speaking of District Championship, we still have a ways to go if we're going to repeat as champions. We need many of you to become more consistent. You can't perform well every other time or every 3rd time. You've got to start getting yourself in the frame of mind that you're going to do your best in every event, every time, no matter what anyone else does. One of the things that has helped us win the District so many times has been the fact that Sierra girls show up to compete at the District meet and so many people from other teams don't. You each have to ask yourself if you're going to do what it takes to make this a championship team. Good luck the rest of the season and have fun".

The rest of the season had a mixed bag of results. We won a five team meet in Pueblo by 60 points, got 2nd at the Wasson invitational to 5A Ponderosa 141 - 121 and our last meet before region/district we went into the Canon City Invitational missing several of our top athletes and got soundly beaten. Rampart won with 114 followed by 5A Highlands Ranch 82, Harrison 51, 3A La Junta 51, Canon City 42 who all placed ahead of us. We had 38 points and still beat 11 other teams.

"As you can see we were beaten by two teams in our region, Harrison by 13 and Canon City by 4. It's the first time in quite some time that we've lost to anyone in the region. The important thing is that we come back from those loses and compete the toughest we've competed all year, every person in every event throughout the entire meet. ANYTHING LESS THAN THE BEST FROM EVERY COMPETITOR IN A SIERRA UNIFORM AND THEY'LL BE CROWNING A NEW CHAMPION!!!" 

And win the Regional Championship they did outscoring runner up County 138 - 107. Harrison who was the co-favorite going in finished 3rd with 90 points. We did it by placing in every event but one including multiple place winners in 9 of the 14 individual events.

State Champion Discus - 1994