COLORADO SPRINGS — “The town needed it … Rocky Ford needed this,” said a nearly tearful Meloneers cross country coach Ron Shepherd.
An afterthought by many, the kids from the Arkansas River Valley won the school’s first state title of any kind in 13 years, besting Lyons and The Classical Academy on Saturday at El Pomar Sports Complex.
“The Arkansas Valley has lost a lot of jobs, the kids graduate and go to the city, and this just brings a lot of pride back to the community,” said Shepherd, in his 17th season as a Meloneer. “We’ve been close, and it’s just nice to be able to take this back to the community.”
Rocky Ford, which left its runner-up trophy last year and made the drive up to CHSAA offices the next day to snag it, was paced by Victor Montoya’s third-place finish.
“We knew we might be close,” said Montoya, a sophomore. “They beat us on our bad days, and we knew if we ran good today that we would win it for sure.”
Lyons finished second with 87 points, TCA finished two points behind with 89 and 2005 champion Bayfield finished fourth at 99 points.
The best runner of the day was Lyons junior Andrew Roberts, whose time of 16 minutes, 37.38 seconds was 12 seconds better than Edwin Cruz of Del Norte and Montoya.
Roberts finished seventh as a freshman and was second to Aspen’s Noah Hoffman last year.
“There was no way that was easy,” said Roberts, who became Lyons’ first state cross country champion. “When the pace turned out to be as slow as it was, I knew I had to go out and get the lead and just try and hold them off at the end.”
Roberts, whose sister Melissa finished eighth in the 3A girls race, took the lead away from Cruz 2 1/2 miles in and never looked back. The Classical Academy’s Trevor Waliszewski, last year’s runner-up, was never able to mount any sort of late push.
