Last weekend, Hope Christian ran well at the Los Lunas meet. This weekend they head to Bernalillo to take on a few more larger schools. Photo by Richard Siminski.
While many of New Mexico's teams will be making runs for the Arizona and Texas borders, there's also plenty to keep teams home in the Land of Enchantment this weekend.
The weekend's action already got underway this afternoon with the Artesia Bulldog Relays, mostly a convocation of smaller schools like Eunice, Jal, and Loving and some of the JV programs of southeast New Mexico's larger schools. The larger school varsity teams start to measure one another tomorrow at the Rocket/Coyote Invitational in Roswell.
Except for a couple of big meets in Texas that figure to draw most of the Las Cruces and Alamogordo area teams, that's pretty much it until Friday. But when Saturday's sun rises, things start to get very busy in New Mexico high school track and field.
Starting west and working (more or less) east, the Rehoboth Invitational will entertain small school fans of track and field in western New Mexico. Judging by their performances at last week's Grants Invitational, Rehoboth is ready to take on all comers and should be tough to beat at their own facility.
Jemez Valley hosts a somewhat larger slice of small school programs on Saturday as well, bringing in teams like Bosque, East Mountain, and Laguna-Acoma to provide for a very competitive atmosphere.
There are three meets going on in the greater Santa Fe/Albuquerque region, hosted by Belen (Jim Burke), Cleveland (Cleveland Kickoff), and Bernalillo. Bernalillo will be drawing largely from points northward, Jim Burke largely from points westward, and Cleveland largely from Albuquerque proper, but also to include the powerhouse program out of Los Alamos. Cleveland figures to be easily the biggest of these three meets and will be hosting many tradition-rich 4A and 5A programs. Teams looking to flex a little early-season muscle should have plenty of opportunity to do that--or go home wondering what hit them--at Cleveland's track on Saturday. Points figure to be especially tough to come by in the distance events with La Cueva, Eldorado, Los Alamos, Albuquerque Academy, Rio Rancho, and Cleveland all sharing the same track. Good luck to all! The stakes at this one are kind of high for an early-season meet.
Also on Saturday, Arizona's Round Valley Invitational figures to pull a few schools out of western New Mexico, though many of those schools will be staying in state this weekend.
As always, results go up here as we receive them. Please e-mail results to the address shown in lower left corner of any page of MileSplit New Mexico.