CB Titans track dominates league championships

21 headed to state, maybe more

“They crushed it,” says Titans track head coach Laura Puckett.
Puckett is referring to her track teams’ efforts in at the Southern Peaks league championships in Center on Friday, May 10 as both the boys and girls track teams won the league title.
As of Monday, 21 Titans are qualified for the state championships, with a couple more athletes possibly getting the call this week.
Winning both titles wasn’t entirely a surprise to Puckett. The girls have won the last two league titles and were expected to bring home a third title in a row. The boys, on the other hand, were a bit of a mystery.
Puckett knew she had the numbers and the talent to bring home the first boys title, but it wasn’t until two days before the championships that she realized exactly what the team’s potential was.
“When I made the entries on Wednesday, I realized how much depth we had,” says Puckett. “There was a lot of strategy put into who did what.”
The strategy panned out better than expected as the boys’ team racked up a staggering 142 points on the day, dominating relays, sprints and distance races as well as a couple of top finishes in field events.
Titan juniors Rain Landry and Forrest Smith did most of the damage, scoring several points both as individuals and as parts of relay teams.
Landry posted first-place finishes in the 100-meter and 200-meter dashes, was a part of the 4×400-meter team that also won, and then joined the 4×200-meter team to place second.
“Rain has definitely become a very important part of the team,” says Puckett.
Smith made his mark in the distance events and mid-distance relays. Smith started off the day winning the two-mile. Freshman Aiden Truettner ran his first two-mile event and came in third place. Freshman Kai Sherman placed fourth to rack up team points early in the day.
Smith then joined junior Kyle Boyle, sophomore Jack Duryea and Sherman to win the 4×800-meter relay and closed out his frantic day taking fifth place in the mile and third place in the 800-meters.
Boyle earned his first league title in the 400-meters and broke his previous school record. Then he teamed up with junior Michael Ryan, Landry and junior Dakota Wiggins to win the 4×400-meter relay.
The boys’ 4×100-meter relay squad of freshman Shawnee Landry, sophomore Kaleb Schultz, junior Danny Prieto and Wiggins ran lights-out in Center to take the league title. The team even tallied points in hurdles as Prieto, who had never run a hurdle event, placed second, with Truettner in third place.
Meanwhile, senior Kane Hamilton-Young and junior Liam Mortell did their part in the field events. Hamilton-Young won the high jump with a personal record jump of 5’10” and Mortell placed second in the shot put.
Ultimately, such widespread talent proved no match for the 16 other teams in attendance as the Titan boys nearly doubled the amount of points the second-place team tallied.
“They just scored really well,” says Puckett. “We now have enough depth that we can put kids in every event.”
As for the Titan girls, while anything but a third league title would have been disappointing, they did get a bit of a scare but ended up with 126 points, 15 points ahead of second place.
“We did not win everything by any means,” says Puckett. “The Sangre girls’ sprinters were phenomenal.”
Senior Amber Scott did what she has always done—decimate her distance rivals in the league.
Scott racked up individual first-place finishes in the two-mile, the mile and the 800-meters and ran the anchor leg for the winning 4×800-meter relay team. In fact, the Titans swept the mile as juniors Shannon Costello and Elizabeth Kilpatrick placed second and third, respectively.
The girls’ 4×200-meter team placed second but the “biggest coup of the day,” according to Puckett, came from the sprint medley team.
Prior to the meet, the coaching staff noticed an opportunity to put together an all-star sprint medley team for a shot at both a league title and another state qualifier.
“This week we decided to stack it,” says Puckett.
The ploy played out as they eked out the win and qualified for the state championships.
While Sangre de Cristo dominated the sprint events, Titan juniors Monika Olesen and Rosie Ewert held their own. Olesen set a new school record in the 100-meters to place fourth and Ewert ran a personal record time in the 100-meters to add key team points. Both will be headed to the state championships.
Junior Suzanna Dumas’ effort in the hurdles all season long paid off on Friday as she placed third in the 100-meter hurdles and second in the 300-meter hurdles.
And junior Ali McGuire iced the championship cake for the Titans as she jumped a school record distance of 32’ 3 ½” to place second in the triple jump.
“It wasn’t a given,” says Puckett of the girls’ team title. “They really had to bring their best and it was fun to bring home another plaque.”
Twenty-one Titans will now jump into the big pond as they head to the 2A state championships at Jeffco Stadium Thursday through Saturday, May 16-18.
“We are really balanced with 11 boys and 10 girls going,” says Puckett, “in everything from the 100-meters to the two-mile.”
While the Titans typically fare well in the distance races and are solid in the sprint relays, the big test will come in the individual sprint events, as the athletes will have to make it through prelims to get into the finals.
“Our sprint individuals is new territory for us,” explains Puckett. “The kids need to be able to produce not one, but two days.”
Fortunately, they are taking some experience with them as several of the girls have been to the big show before.
“The girls are pretty savvy at this point,” says Puckett. “The boys’ side could be a bit of a wake-up call but their times are very competitive. It’s anyone’s game, it’s exciting.”