It's getting closer and closer to crunch time. That being the case, let's take a look around the state for any clues we might be able to gather. In this case, however, looking around the state first entails looking at a meet outside of the state.
Mt. SAC has a long history of Arizona teams attending. That number was diminished somewhat this year. Only a few Arizona teams--Chandler Preparatory, Cienega, Vista Grande, and Xavier College Preparatory made the trip across the harsh California desert to Mt. SAC.
Chandler Preparatory brought only a partial girls squad and did not garner a team score. Cienega scored a team, but without anyone under 22 minutes. The same could be said for Vista Grande. XCP had a nice overall set of results, with Hannah Wheeling, Tatum Goforth, and Catherine Alaimo each dipping under 20 minutes on the challenging Mt. SAC course. XCP has some tough D1 sledding ahead of them but showed well on this visit to sunny California.
Back within the boundaries of the Grand Canyon state, the Valley Lutheran Invitational was the largest meet for which we have results at the time of this writing. Though largely a small school meet, there was a significant contingent of larger schools in attendance. But, it was the smaller schools who stole the show.
Northwest Christian edged out Glendale Prep for the team title, while Arizona College Prep stayed well within shouting distance. That stamps all three as teams of interest up the fast-approaching state meet.
Lucy Turley of Greenway took the individual title, with Kimi Cahoon leading the small-school contingent in second. If hearing the name of Kimi Cahoon reminds you of Phoenix Country Day, they did score a team this time around but ended up well back of the team leaders in sixth place.
If you're already saying to yourself, "Well, I'll wager that Thatcher and Benson were at this meet," you will probably have some difficulty finding any takers on that bet. If you offer further, "I'll wager that Thatcher won," you will encounter more of the same problem. You might even tender, "I'll bet you that Amity Hall won!" and you could yet again find yourself in the land of few willing participants. But, this time, at least, you'd be wrong. Freshman Ainsley Hepworth of Willcox took the win, edging Hall by three seconds. And therein lies the story of this meet.
For the uninitiated, PUSD stands for Peoria Union School District. The win went to Madeline Reeves of Liberty, but Madelyn Palmer of Sunrise Mountain chased her to the finish line before succumbing, 17:59 to 18:02. Maybe you're just a little faster at the end of you spell your name with an "ine" at the end instead of "yn." I don't know. In any case, the two fastest girls in the race (by far) had homophones for first names (still do, in fact).
As far as team scores go, all you really need to know is that Liberty had five of the top six places. Game over.
Paradise Valley District Championships
So, it was a week for district championships. You probably already knew that, though.
To be blunt, this one was only lightly contested. Pinnacle was the only school with a team score in the varsity race. Amanda Bernier of Shadow Mountain took individual honors in 20:38.
Most cacti don't have large shadows in which to take refuge from the summer sun. But, as far as shadows go in the desert, cactus shadows are better than none.
Anyhow, your winner here was Lucy Turley. If you'll scroll a few lines up, you'll find this wasn't the only meet she won last week. Ms. Turley was busy winning races over the span of the last few days. Her Greenway teammates put up a nice fight before falling, 34-35, to Cactus Shadows in the team scoring.
If you were among the uninitiated three meets up, it doesn't follow that you're among the uninitiated for this meet. But, you could be. To eliminate the suspense, I'll let you know that DVUSD stands for Deer Valley Unified School District, but using four fewer syllables and 30 fewer characters, counting spaces.
Having absorbed that information, you'll be interested to know that Deer Valley's own Nya Valenzuela (who has been mentioned a few times previously in these articles) hammered the field by about a minute-and-a-half with a winning time of 19:20. Alas, however, Deer Valley fell to Boulder Creek in the team scoring.
Truth is, I don't know who actually hosted this meet, but I'm giving Rincon University credit for it even so.
It was a very small meet won by Araceli Gonzales of Pueblo Magnet by a rather large margin. The next nine places, however, belonged to Rincon University and so you can guess how the team scoring went.
In summary, then, we actually didn't learn all that much from the meets of the week past, at least not so far as settling state scores is concerned. Most of the biggest powers around the state of Arizona sat this past week out. There's been a fair bit of that the last few weeks.