The Colorado High-School State Championships start tomorrow

The weather forecast again highlights both the pros and cons of a three-day track and field championship

Five years ago, the CHSAA State Track and Field Championships, popularly known as the Colorado State Championships, were postponed thanks to a snowstorm. This was problematic, because the championships for the 1A through 5A classifications are held over three days, beginning on the third Thursday of every May. This allows for both preliminary rounds and easier “doubling” and “tripling,” as the ten 3200-meter championship races are held on Thursday, the 800-meter finals on Friday and the 1,600-meter contests on Saturday. The storm forced a compression of the meet schedule into a single day (Saturday), obviously affecting the results in largely indeterminate but significant ways.

The meet is always held at JeffCo Stadium (elevation 5,551’) in Lakewood, just west of Denver and an easy 20-mile drive from my house. In 2018, I drove down for the last day of competition and watched an unforgettably ferocious battle in the 5A boys’ 1,600 meters, in which Michael Mooney of Broomfield prevailed by one-fiftieth of a second over Mountain Vista’s Carter Dillon, then and now boasting among the whitest names in U.S. history.

I was considering heading down tomorrow morning to take in the 3200-meter races of this year’s state championships, but that would probably make me want to return for at least one of the two remaining days, and I can’t be spewing car exhaust hither and yon like someone who just doesn’t care about others. I also have things to do, as implausible as my dolorous rants and low-pH persona render such a scenario. But even more urgent than my own schedule is the likelihood of a quasi-weather repeat of 2017, this time with the whitish precipitation expected on the second and third days of the championships.

This was the extended local forecast as of Wednesday at 3 p.m. The one for Lakewood is scarcely different.

Fortunately for those unlucky enough to have paid Milesplit accounts, all three days of the state championships will be livestreamed at this link beginning at 8 a.m. MDT tomorrow, so even those of us who conscientiously avoid driving gassy autos strictly for your and your kids’ sake can still enjoy the races, jumps and throws. I will be hosting a viewing party; tickets will be available soon.

If you have read this far, you might be interested in looking at the meeting programme. (No, I’m not fucking British, but “programme” is just irresistible.) The complete schedule—for now, i.e., pending any weather-driven alterations—is on the 13th of the document’s 32 ersatz-flippable pages.

The Milesplit championships home page includes links to stories accessible to non-account holders, among them this excellent recap of the career Riley Stewart, the Cherry Creek senior who recently ran 10:06 at 5,866’ elevation, blowing my mind to the point that it’s now just a pile of wrinkly wet glop perched morosely atop rapidly calcifying hunger and horniness centers.

As the meet develops—perhaps toward a stunting of its own growth as the filmy white clouds now dotting the sky coalesce into dark, hulking emissaries of shattered running dreams and punishing hypothermia—I’ll be back with observations about whatever I find striking. But because I care so much about others, I created a set of performance lists for the three solo distance events.

I have no idea how well these lists correlate with the meet entry lists, because I don’t care that much. But these times were all recorded within Colorado, meaning that almost every performance was recorded at an altitude of at least 5,000’.

At JeffCo Stadium, the 800 meters is minimally affected by the altitude (less than a second vs. sea level), while the 1,600 meters runs about 2.7 percent slower and the 3,200 meters about 3.1 percent slower.

This is an exciting meet to attend in person, even if snow in late May is enough to discourage climate-conscious observers and unadventurous cobweb-accumulators to stay home and gawp at young athletes from the safety of the couch. But if you have a way to watch any of it online, it will be worth it, especially if a tsunami somewhat unexpectedly wipes out all of Jefferson County on Saturday and the announcers keep talking about the Cheyenne Mountain boys and their 7:47.51 4 × 800m relay seed time.