Claire Green of Louisville leads a pack of Colorado runners early in the NXN-SW girls championship race. Photo by Alan Versaw.
While the Southwest region has yet to produce a national champion, it has consistently performed well at NXN. Once again, the Southwest region will be sending some top-tier teams to Nike Cross Nationals. Whether or not they can end the championship drought remains to be seen.
Packing 'em in--Mackenzie Morrison, Derek Day, and Austin West closed out the scoring for a powerful American Fork team. Photo by Alan Versaw.
At today's Southwest regional meet, American Fork took no prisoners in the boys' race. Most teams would be delighted to turn in a 3-4-10-13-14 at their state race. Seeing that kind of numbers at a Nike regional race boggles the brain just a little. Add to that the consideration that Austin West figures to get a little bit stronger with another two weeks of training, and you have an excellent case for taking American Fork seriously as a national title threat.
The 3-4 by Clayton Young and Ashenafe Richardson gave the team from Utah an insurmountable advantage--and one that only grew bigger as the rest of their scoring runners crossed the finish line.
The big surprise of the Southwest region was the failure of Albuquerque Academy to advance to nationals. While American Fork was the favorite to win the regional, conventional wisdom had ABQ XC (the club designamtion for the AA squad) nailing down the #2 slot. It didn't happen. It wasn't even close to happening. Both Fort Collins (Colorado) and Davis (Utah) were well ahead of the team from Albuquerque. While there had been some indications that the Albuquerque Academy machine was struggling just a little coming out of the NMAA-sanctioned season, nobody foresaw the roughly 80-point margin that both Fort Collins and Davis put up on Adam Kedge's crew. It's not so much that ABQ XC had a weakness as that they lacked a strong presence up front. All five of their runners finished in under 16:20, but none at 16:00. And, on a day when a few sub-16s were a prerequisite of advancing, ABQ XC missed the train.
For Fort Collins, it won't be a first trip to NXN/NTN, but it will be the first trip for the boys since the regional qualifying system was established. Davis narrowly missed an automatic bid but still occupies a strong position for an at-large bid by virtue of their victory over two already-qualified NW region teams at the Bob Firman Invitational in late September.
Billy Orman (Arizona), the individual winner, passed on an opportunity to run at NXN in favor of competing at Foot Locker West in two weekends. That meant that the top two individual qualifiers were handed to Colorado runners--Spencer Wenck and Danny Carney. Alejandro Valencia or Arizona nabbed the third indivdual qualifying position.
In the girls' race, much pre-race speculation had been made about the Xavier College Prep girls out of Arizona. Many, perhaps most, had them pegged at the odds-on favorites to win the regional title. It didn't hurt that they would be running in their own backyard.
But two teams from Colorado had a different idea--and just enough gas to bring that idea into fruition. Fort Collins outdueled Louisville (Monarch) for a one-point victory in the team tally. Both teams, by the way, are very young and figure to cause trouble down the road as well as this year. Fort Collins relied on the strength of front-runners Erin Hooker and Marci Witczak. Monarch relied on a 46-second pack time behind front-runner Claire Green to execute their plan.
Neither plan had much margin for error, however, as Xavier finished only six points back of Louisville and seven points back of Fort Collins. While Xavier enters the waiting game for a national bid, the recognized strength of the California and New York regions makes it seem an unlikely proposition that at-large bids will be extended to any other regions.
The top individual girls qualifier from the region followed the lead of Billy Orman and opted out of the NXN meet in order to compete in Foot Locker West. Despite winning by six seconds in 17:39, Julia Foster will not be seen in Portland in two weeks. Top individual qualifying spots went to Sarah Fakler of Xavier, Shea Martinez of Davis, Hannah Everson of Liberty (Colorado), and Kailie Hartman of Loveland (Colorado).
Times that seemed to be trending fast early in the day with barely perceptible breezes slowed a little later in the morning as heat built up and southerly breezes began to rouse from their slumber.