You can run, but you can't hide. A cross country meet is coming to a course near you this weekend.
This weekend's action actually got underway as this article was going to publication with the Lovington Invitational, the only meet in southeastern New Mexico this weekend. I'll make a brief public request for results from that meet to post to this site.
And, now, on to Friday's action.
A few teams from northwestern New Mexico may plot an escape to the Abajo Mountains of Utah for a pleasant little meet call the Loyd's Lake Classic. For those schools not making the trip to Utah, a large share of western and northwestern New Mexico will be converging on Rehoboth for a little higher elevation, some great scenery, and a pretty decent cross country meet. Rehoboth was one of the better small schools in the state last fall, but needs to find a new way to put the pieces together after graduation. That process begins tomorrow.
The rest of the weekend's action comes on Saturday.
The southern schools will be headed en masse to Alamogordo for an opportunity to run within the confines of the state (not that Alamogordo offers much in the way of travel savings over El Paso). Schools on the list of attendees include Centennial, Chaparral, Cobre, Deming, Gadsden, Las Cruces, Mayfield, Mesilla Valley, Onate, Santa Teresa, and Silver. That should provide for a nice little test of relative strength of several programs.
The biggest deal meet of the weekend may be taking place in Rio Rancho at the Cleveland Invitational. Figure the Storm comes into this one with something to prove. Trying to keep them from proving anything at their expense will be Albuquerque Academy, Belen, Eldorado, Hope Christian, Los Lunas, La Cueva, Sandia, and Volcano Vista. If that sounds to you a little like a loaded slate of teams, it is.
Del Norte figures to pick up most of the rest of Albuquerque area schools with their meet at Piedra Lisa Park.
Moving north from the Albuquerque area, we encounter the Espanola Invitational. Teams from the north central part of the state will be converging hard on this meet. But, it won't be the only meet in the general area.
The Academy for Tech and Classics in Santa Fe is hosting a meet with a new twist for New Mexico--everybody runs in the same race. Well, probably two races--one for boys and one for girls, but I'm not absolutely sure about that. Anyhow, this accomplishes a couple a nice things. One, it makes a small school meet feel a lot larger. Two, it gets everybody on the road home a lot faster. Here's hoping for a very successful debut for the concept. The Bosque School is making the trip up to stir the pot a little at this one.
And still more of the north central schools (are there any left?) will be headed across the border to Alamosa for the Joe Vigil Open. Only the "open" part is just for the college and older crowd. The high school race is very much a be-part-of-a-team-or-don't-show-up kind of meet. The course is flat and fast, even though it's at over 7500 feet of elevation.
That should keep people around these parts happy and busy. Please know that all meets are invited to send results for posting to this site. Have a great weekend of cross country!