LAKEWOOD | The Eaglecrest girls track team came up just short of landing the biggest prize — the Class 5A team state championship — Saturday, but plenty of medals came home with the Raptors and other Aurora area programs.
In a team chase that came all the way down to the final race of the three-day meet at Jefferson County Stadium — the 4×400 meter relay — Eaglecrest came up short head-to-head in the finals with Mountain Vista, which won the event and the state crown by five points.
Eaglecrest finished as the runner-up for a second straight season, while the Aurora area had a second team in the top three as Cherokee Trail finished third.
The Raptors and Cougars both had individual state champions as well.
Back on Thursday, Eaglecrest junior Zenobia Witt became a three-time state champion in the 5A girls long jump, when she defended her crown with a winning jump of 19 feet, 3 1/4 inches, which was more than a foot further than her closest competitor.
On the last day of the meet, Witt (who has six state titles to her credit in three seasons) added a second place in the 100 meter hurdles and finished up with a sixth place in the 300 hurdles to contribute significantly to the Raptors’ 61 points.
Cherokee Trail amassed 50 points and a large number of them came from freshman Madison Lange, who had an outstanding debut. Individually, she finished second in the 3,200 meters on the first day of the meet, turned in a third place result in the 800 meters on Friday and finished the meet with a state championship in the 1,600 meters.
Lange ran a time of 4 minutes, 52.32 seconds, to beat a field that included multiple state champions in other events, including Heritage’s Emry Schwalm — who took the 3,200 meters — and Riverdale Ridge’s Payton Meineke (800 meters) plus the defending champion in Emily Cohen of Cherry Creek.
Courtney Oakes is Aurora Sentinel Sports Editor. Reach him at sports@sentinelcolorado.com. Twitter/X: @aurorasports. IG: Sentinel Prep Sports
