A half-dozen Coloradans are among 80 schoolboys and schoolgirls from across the country who will compete Saturday in the Foot Locker Cross Country Championships at San Diego’s Balboa Park.
Local boys who qualified recently by finishing in the top 10 in the Midwest Regional in Kenos ha, Wis., are: Angel Tolev, Thornton; Evan Appel, Dakota Ridge; Joseph Manilafasha of North; and Richard Medina, Grand Junction. Girls: Kaitie Vanatta, Ralston Valley; and Kristen McGlynn, Platte Canyon.
Tolev, the runner-up in the Colorado Class 5A meet in October, was second in the regional by five seconds.
Appel, third in 5A, finished fifth; Manilafasha, the 4A Colorado champion, was sixth; and Medina, the 5A champion, tied for eighth.
Vanatta, a sophomore who has won consecutive 4A Colorado titles, was second in the regional by three seconds; and McGlynn, a 12th-grader and two-time state champion in 3A, was fifth.
Colorado, a significant contributor to the races that formed in 1979 and previously were contested in Orlando, Fla., has had a national champion four times, including back- to-back by Boulder’s Melody Fairchild, 1989-90. One of five repeat winners in 27 years, Fairchild’s time of 16 minutes, 39 seconds in 1990, continues as the Balboa Park course standard.
Doherty’s Adam Goucher, a three-time champion in 5A, is the state’s only schoolboy winner, in 1993. Smoky Hill’s Katelyn Kaltenbach is Colorado’s most recent champion, in 2003.
