The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Two Titans finish in the top 10
The Titans girls’ cross-country team finished in second place in the state meet on Saturday, October 25 in Ft. Collins with two girls, sophomore Erin Kelly and senior Maddison Garcia, placing in the top 10 and four Titans in the top 20, a first for Crested Butte cross-country.
Heading into the race, coach Emma Catmur knew who her team had to look out for—Nederland.
Nederland entered the post-season the number-one-ranked team in 2A with Crested Butte in second, but the two teams never raced each other during the regular season, leaving pre-race prognosticators at a loss for who would win.
In the end, while the Titan girls gave it everything they had, Nederland had a bit more. Nonetheless, “They all ran the best races they could out there,” says Catmur of her runners. “It was just Nederland’s day to win it.”
Leading the team, as she has done all season, was Kelly.
She took off from the start line determined to follow her pre-race strategy as she would be tested by the sister act of Kat and Kelley Robinson from Nederland.
“My strategy was to run faster in the beginning and keep that same pace the whole time, because I knew Kelley (Robinson) had a really good kick at the end,” says Kelly.
Kelly jumped out into the lead off the start but started hearing the sound of her competition by the time she reached the one-mile mark.
By the two-mile mark, Kelly and Robinson were neck-and-neck, trading off the lead until Robinson hit the final stretch kick to take the lead for good.
Kelly kicked hard to hold off the other Robinson sister to finish in second place with a personal record time of 19:16 on the five-kilometer course.
“I felt like I had my best race and that was all I could do,” says Kelly.
With Kelly out in front in her one-on-one battle, Garcia was in the middle of the chase pack.
Garcia set a personal record time of 19:51 while battling with her peers to come in seventh place.
“That’s the first time we’ve had two runners in the top 10,” says Catmur.
Junior Monica Kinsella followed her modus operandi. After sliding into 20th place in the opening half of the race, Kinsella pushed through the field to a 14th-place finish overall with her personal best time of 20:32.
Senior Emma Vosburg posted her best time of the season as well to finish in 20th place with a time of 20:57 and sophomore Hannah Smith crossed in 34th place with a time of 22:16.
“We had four girls in the top 20, which was awesome,” says Catmur. “They all ran really strong and stayed focused the entire race. I was really proud of them.”
The efforts of Kelly, Garcia and Kinsella secured the Titan girls their first piece of state race hardware, giving them something to add to the trophy case in the halls of the Crested Butte Community School.
