The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“The bar has been raised in attitude and effort”
The 2012 Titans high school track season is off to an auspicious start. First of all, head coach Laura Puckett has 31 athletes out this year, including 15 boys, a number Puckett calls a “modern miracle.”
Second, Puckett senses something different about this year’s crew.
“The level of fitness was higher coming into the season this year,” says Puckett. “The bar has been raised in attitude and effort. There’s a lot of positive energy this year.”
Finally, the weather is actually cooperating. For Puckett’s first three years as the coach, preseason workouts have been relegated to the gym with a handful of forays onto the streets of Crested Butte, weather permitting, as well as a couple of trips to Gunnison.
This year the team was met with mild temperatures from their start on February 27 and through the first two weeks of March.
“The weather has been amazing for track,” says Puckett. “It’s the first time we’ve run on our track before mid-April.”
Puckett has two coaches helping her out this year. Kristin Meadors coached with Puckett last year and returns to oversee the mid- and long-distance running athletes.
Chelsea Murray was a heptathlete at Western State College and coached the Crested Butte middle school team last year. She moved up to the high school team this season and will work with the Titans’ sprinters and hurdlers, as well as all of the field events.
“She can do everything,” says Puckett.
The team itself is comprised of a core group of seasoned veterans and senior captains Toni Brown, Skylar Kraatz and Matt Galley. Adding to the mix are a number of freshmen who Puckett believes have a chance to make a statement this season and some new faces who have pure athletic ability in need of fine-tuning by the coaches and some racing experience.
The Titans capped the first two weeks of preseason workouts with a scrimmage meet in Montrose on March 10 and opened the regular season of meets with the Delta Panther Invitational on Saturday, March 17.
The Panther Invitational brings in 20 teams from throughout Colorado and is one of the largest track meets the Titans attend all season.
“It’s a big meet,” says Puckett. “There’s everything from 1A schools to 4A schools, including several 2A powerhouses.”
Galley had the top results for the boys’ team on the day, including a thrilling second-place finish in the mile. Almost the entire pack of runners remained tight for the first three-and-a-half laps of the race until Galley and another runner started pulling away with 300 meters to go. The two runners duked it out until the finish line but Galley was edged out on the final stretch for the tape.
“They were side-by-side the entire 300 meters,” says Puckett. “It was a photo finish.”
Galley followed that with a fifth-place finish in the 800 meters and then lined up to lead the boys’ 4×400-meter relay to a sixth-place finish.
Freshman Kaleb Schultz is showing promise in the sprint events, taking 15th place against a giant field in the 200-meter dash. Sophomore Kyle Boyle picked up right where he left off last year, taking 10th in the 400 meters, posting a time that equaled his personal record from last season.
In addition to the solid results from the individual boys, Puckett is excited about the future of her boys relay teams with her numbers this year.
“We had a 4×400 and a 4×100 team and we still don’t have all of our boys back yet,” says Puckett.
The girls’ team should once again be a force to be reckoned with among their 2A peers.
Sophomore Monika Olesen set the tone in the opening 100-meter dash battling her way through a field of runners 75-strong to place 10th.
Kraatz is the school record holder in the 400 meters and qualified for the state meet as a sophomore. She spent last year in Germany but is back for her senior year and ready to roll, placing sixth in the 400 meters in Delta.
Kraatz continued her day, joining juniors Amber Scott and Elisabeth Desmarais and sophomore Suzanna Dumas to post a sixth-place finish in the 4×400 meter relay.
Scott and Desmarais teamed up with sophomore Shannon Costello and first-time trackster Miki Olesen to place fourth in the 4×800 meter relay.
“It’s Miki’s first year in track and our eyes are on her to be an important contributor to the girls’ distance squad,” says Puckett.
Despite battling an illness, Scott lined up for the 1,600 meter run as well and finished sixth.
In the end the boys’ team finished 14th overall and the girls’ team 11th out of 20 teams. And it’s just the beginning.
“It kind of tells us what everyone came into the season with,” says Puckett. “They’re still getting their legs underneath them.”
One major change Puckett made this year is in the team’s schedule. While in years past, the Titans team, a 2A squad, spent most of the season at big meets such as the Panther Invitational competing against bigger schools, Puckett has set her sights on smaller meets this year. The Titans head to a new track meet in Hotchkiss on Saturday, March 24 where they will face 2A and 3A squads.
“This season I want to focus more on competition with 2A and 3A schools,” says Puckett.
