LAKEWOOD — Chase Cooper had his goal, and so did Kelli Ehardt. Neither quite reached them, but both proved they were definitely the state’s best Class 5A pole vaulters.
Saturday at Jefferson County Stadium, they won state championships. Cooper, a junior from Smoky Hill, topped his previous season high with a leap of 16 feet, 7 inches to easily win the boys competition. Ehardt, a Rampart senior, topped her 5A record in the girls competition at 13-1.
Their titles were never in doubt, but personal goals were what they were shooting for.
“About 16-9 1/2 was my goal,” said Cooper, who finished second last year. “Getting probably more height than the championship was my goal. I was predicted to win, so it was nice to get higher.”
Ehardt, who saw her state meet mark of 13-0 fall Friday when Longmont’s Elizabeth Stover went 13-3 in the Class 4A competition, admitted she was looking to regain the record.
“I was. You know the season I’ve been having with injuries, weather and all, I’m happy to get a PR (personal record), to tell you the truth,” Ehardt said. “I was pushing for a new all-state, but I’ll take this.”
Montbello and Arapahoe will take their awards, too, as team state champions. Both supplanted George Washington, with Montbello winning the girls title for the fourth time since 2003 with 55 points. Fort Collins came in second with 47 1/2 points and Rocky Mountain tied Heritage for third with 46.
In the boys field, Arapahoe won its first state title with 53 points. Runner-up Cherry Creek finished with 50. Littleton and Rampart tied for third with 41.
While the Cherry Creek boys weren’t champions as a team, Roman Holmes was in the triple jump. He easily took top honors with a jump of 50-9 1/4. But he was 3 inches shy of tying the oldest state record — Vic White’s leap of 51- 1/4 for Harrison in 1973.
Heritage’s Jordan Edwards and Denver East’s Dominic Roberts were successful as well. That could have been because Overland star Jeremy Rankin, the 100-meter champion in 2007, wasn’t able to defend his title because of an ankle injury.
Nevertheless, opportunity presented itself and Edwards and Roberts capitalized.
Edwards took advantage of Rankin’s absence in the 100, winning the event in 10.81, just three-hundredths of a second ahead of Loveland’s Jesse Lewis. All nine runners in the race finished within 0.34 of a second of each other.
The finish in the 100 was so tight that neither the officials nor the runners were exactly sure who had won until it was verified by photos.
“At the finish I kind of felt a little bit that I was first, then I wasn’t sure because they didn’t know in the press box,” said Edwards, a junior who didn’t qualify for the 100 last year.
Roberts not only qualified in the 400, he won the event in 2007. And he wasn’t about to give it up so easily.
“I won last year, so it’s only right to defend the title,” said Roberts, who had a winning time of 47.27 — almost a second ahead of Rampart’s Devin Mohn. Mohn appeared to have a shot at winning the 400. But that wasn’t the case, according to Roberts.
“I let him come up on me and then I burned him,” said Roberts, who came back later to win the 200 in 21.09. “It worked. (But) there’s competition, just enough competition that I can’t slack off.”
Brianna Patton certainly wasn’t slacking off. The Eaglecrest hurdler overcame a tough field, which included Heritage’s Taylor Baird and Doherty’s Carly Allen, to win the girls 100 hurdles in 14.08. Baird came in second (14.29).
“I knew I had a lot of great competition, so I had to just be focused and prepare myself anyway possible to win this,” Patton said.
