Pouncing on the opportunity

Tiger spottings were a frequent thing at the front of the 3A girls field. Photo by Alan Versaw.

There was something familiar about this year’s 3A girls race. Actually, there were a few things familiar about the outcome of the race.
 
The first items to ring familiar were the first and second place finishes of Rachel Fleddermann (19:33) and Megan Herrera (19:40). After that, however, there was a little more variation to the script.
 
Last year, Taos came into the state meet with a reasonable shot at a state title but the Tigers weren’t ready to pounce at the exact moment the opportunity presented itself.  There was no such hesitation this year. 

Haley Rach’s fourth in 19:57 got things started for the Tigers. When she finished, she didn’t have much time to wait for the eventual outcome to sort itself out.  Teammates came streaming across the line in quick succession. 
 
Following Rach were Cora Cannedy in sixth, Hannah Gunther in eighth, Lucia Constanza in ninth, and Elizabeth Reyes in 17th. Each of those finishes came less than a minute after Rach’s finish, sewing up a nice pack time in the process. Any time you put your top five into the top 17 places in a state race, you have an outstanding chance of winning the meet. And Taos did not meet up with the exception to that rule at yesterday’s state meet.
 
As a matter of fact, Taos won big, 44 points to 82 for second-place Sandia Prep.
 
While Rachel Fleddermann (photo, right, by Alan Versaw) did all she could for the Sun Devil cause, the push from the rest of the pack that would challenge Taos for the title never quite materialized. Mari Yepa finished in tenth, but nobody else wearing the Sandia Prep maroon and gray finished ahead of any of Taos’s scoring runners. 
 
St. Michael’s packed up very nicely behind Jordyn Romero in 13th, scoring 99 points and claiming third place. That would be good enough to edge out Shiprock, last year’s state champions, by one point. 
 
Pojoaque Valley had two in the top five in Herrera and Miranda Grasmick, but absorbed enough points the rest of the way to finish fifth with 120 points.
 
Robertson’s Anabella Miller added a Las Vegas kind of touch to the top ten with her third-place finish in 19:40, only a quarter-second behind Pojoaque’s Herrera. It was the second year in a row that Herrera claimed second by the narrowest of margins.
 

Complete Results and Photos