The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
“We’re in the home stretch now”
As is often the case with any high school sport, there are going to be some down days. No matter what a coach does to prepare a team for competition, sometimes they just don’t show up.
In the case of track and field, if the first few events of a track meet go unexpectedly bad, it can have a ripple effect bringing the team down the rest of the day.
“It can kind of feed on itself,” says Titans coach Laura Puckett.
Throw in some foul weather and a team’s effort can tank.
Puckett and the Titans flirted with such a disaster at the High Altitude Challenge in Alamosa on Saturday, April 28. Thirty teams came out for the High Altitude Challenge and were met with windy and cold conditions to start.
Amber Scott kicked it off for the Titans on the right foot in the two-mile race, running her season’s best time of 12:19.25 to place third but the rest of the team muddled through the opening events of the meet.
“It seemed like they were just going through their paces a little bit,” says Puckett.
But as the day wore on and the weather improved, the Titans put together a series of solid results to finish strong.
“Things went very differently in the last three or four events of the day,” says Puckett.
Suzanna Dumas stepped into the starting blocks for the 300 hurdles the first time ever and left it all on the track. The Titans had a couple of strong showings in the 200 meters and the team started to build momentum.
Matt Galley ran his fastest time of the year in the 800 meters, 2:05.94, to place third and Forrest Smith took the bull by the horns in his first two-mile race of the season. Smith won the two-mile with a time of 10:40.14, close to his personal record time from last year.
“He did what his coaches told him to do and made it look so easy,” says Puckett.
Skylar Kraatz took fourth in the 400 meters and then joined Dumas, Lindsay Kopf and up-and-comer Miki Olesen in the 4×400-meter relay to pull off the win with a season’s-best time of 4:23.87.
“Miki Olesen has become the silver bullet for our 4×400 team,” says Puckett. “It’s really strong and they ran really well.”
The boys 4×400-meter relay team of Galley, Kyle Boyle, Kaleb Schultz and Michael Ryan followed suit, almost, in their hotly contested race. The four Titans all ran exceptional legs to finish in third place in Alamosa and move up in the state rankings.
“They really ran with their hearts, which is what I wanted to see,” says Puckett.
Boyle continued to shave time in the 400 meters, setting another personal record in Alamosa by more than a second to finish in second place.
The day came to a climactic close with the girls’ triple jump. With all of the events done, the Titans lined the triple jump venue to cheer on Ali McGuire in her first attempt at the event in her career. McGuire jumped 31’10” on each of her three jumps to reach the finals and finish in fifth.
“That really tied the room together,” says Puckett.
In the end the boys’ team finished seventh out of 30 teams while the girls took ninth place. It was the first time the boys’ team placed higher than the girls in Puckett’s tenure as coach and probably ever in Titans track and field history.
The Titans team will divide and conquer this weekend. Most of the team will go to Cedaredge for one meet, while the distance crew of Scott, Galley, Smith and Ian Boucher, if he’s healthy, will go to Grand Junction for the prestigious Tiger Invite.
“It’s low in altitude so it’s a very fast track for distance runners,” says Puckett. “I want to give our distance runners one very competitive race before they go to state. I want to give them a chance to have one extraordinary race so they go into state confident with their heads held high.”
The Titans team will then head to Center on Friday, May 11 for the league meet and finish with the state meet May 17-19. As it stands now, almost everyone on the Titans’ team has either qualified for or is on the cusp of qualifying for the state meet.
“We’re in the home stretch now,” says Puckett.
