With only a quarter-mile to go, William Charles steels himself to withstand the closing charges of Garrison Eddie and Jacob Subratie. Photo by Alan Versaw.
In the last race of the day, Cimarron learned what Eldorado's girls and Albuquerque Academy's boys learned before them: there is no such thing as a sure thing.
Cimarron came in as huge favorites to repeat at 1A champions. Nothing about the season leading up to the state meet indicated any chinks in the armor. Although results from around the state were sparse, neither did anything indicate anyone was ready to challenge the team that had simply dismembered the field at last year's state meet.
Preliminary indicators will let you down if you lean too heavily on them.
Struggles hit the Rams at every point in the lineup. Jacob Subratie, at least a co-favorite to win the individual title, ran second to Gateway Christian's William Charles. Charles had just enough at the end to hold off Subratie, 17:40 to 17:41.
Henry Sime, second in the Cimarron order, finished eighth in 18:34. Matthew Niemic and Thomas Gallegos went to 15th and 16th, respectively. Chris Coca finished the scoring in 30th (24 team points). And all that left a lot of room for an opportunistic team to take advantage of the circumstances.
Saturday's opportunistic team wore the yellow singlets of Jemez Valley.
Trevor Armijo (photo, left, by Alan Versaw) was unable to defend his individual title from last year, but this year held a bigger prize in store for the Jemez Valley sophomore. He would start the JV team scoring in fourth.
Korrin Williams added a sixth. And then there was a long pause, long enough, perhaps, to allow Cimarron to imagine their title defense would go largely unchallenged. But the 16-17-18 of Adam Castillo, D'Mitry Vigil, and Justis Romero was just enough for Jemez Valley to slip by Cimarron, 59 to 62.
And so the torchbearer role passed from Cimarron to Jemez Valley, but remained safely parked in the northern reaches of the state.
Tse Yi Gai was a distant third in the team scoring, and Pine Hill's Garrison Eddie claimed third in the individual derby.