U.S. #1 (or #2) Niwot girls sweep top five places at Desert Twilight
And somehow, the boys' team strolling the same hallways is younger, deeper, and just as hot
After the display the girls of Air Academy of Colorado Springs put on at the Woodbridge Classic in California two weeks ago, Milesplit elevated the team from #4 to #1 in its nationwide ranking. This displaced Niwot High, located in a hamlet ten miles northeast of Boulder, to #2, despite Niwot issuing a sound beating to local competition—including then-U.S. #8 Mountain Vista—at the St. Vrain Invitational, which was held on the same day as Woodbridge. The same two teams occupy the top two spots in Dyestat's latest U.S. rankings, but in the reverse order.
Last night, the Niwot girls took their own turn at racing at low altitude for the first time this season, in this case on a golf course 1,200’ above sea level in Mesa, Arizona at the Desert Twilight XC Festival. It's a shame Air Academy, whose top runners appear to be sitting the weekend out, didn't also make the trip to Arizona, because the two teams won't meet at the state Championships in four weeks, Air Academy being a 5A school and Niwot a 4A school.
Last year, when the event was held at Coyote Run Golf Course, both teams were there, with Niwot (42 points) winning decisively over second-place Air Academy (92 points). At last fall’s NXN Southwest Regional Championship, also held at Coyote Run, Niwot won with 67 points to the 84 tallied by Lone Peak of Highland, Utah and Air Academy’s 173.
This year’s NXN Southwest races will again be contested at Coyote Run, but the Twilight Desert XC Festival was moved to a different golf course in Mesa, Toka Sticks, that was used in the past before construction forced a crosstown move in 2014.
Last year, Milesplit considered it noteworthy that Niwot placed eight girls in the top twenty. Last night, the team’s eighth runner straggled home in 23rd, but the overall result was probably more impressive.
The temperature was in the low to mid-80s for this race, although since it was held at 10 p.m., direct sunlight was only an issue for runners who became very, very lost along the way. And even without that factor, comparing these times to the ones Air Academy launched skyward at Woodbridge isn’t especially helpful. But for the record, Niwot’s top five averaged a hair under 17:32 last night and Air Academy’s 16:34 three-mile top-five average in Cali is worth around 17:10 for 5K.
The Niwot boys—ranked #25 in the nation by Dyestat—came to play, too. And while they didn’t sweep the top five places, the team’s 80-point margin of victory over ThunderRidge of Highlands Ranch, Colorado replicated the girls’ 80-point gap on Hellgate High, which is somewhere in Montana and in fact has the perfect name for any American public school.
The Niwot boys have no seniors on the varsity roster. On average, they have a crude grade level of 10.43. I made up that statistic, and where the figure comes from is obvious. This is no longer unheard of for a solid boys’ cross-country squad,
The two feature races at Desert Twilight, as at many invitationals eager to signal their own importance, are called “Sweepstakes” races. These races rank in stature above the two events labeled “Championship” races Desert Twilight offers. These “Championship” races are therefore JV races of a sort, as only top-rated schools can enter teams into the “Sweepstakes” races.
Niwot didn’t enter a complete girls’ team into the de facto JV event, but it rolled out a boys’ squad that racked up a 16:01 top-five average in defeating Durango’s varsity team by 35 points. This group of Niwot boys scored 42 points and saw its fifth runner place 19th overall, nearly mirroring the performance of the varsity team, which scored 45 points and had its fifth runner take 18th overall.
Dyestat conducted a post-race interview with Niwot coach Kelly Christensen and provided the photo below.
