Malia Gonzales will lead the Storm into Bear Canyon for a showdown with St. Pius X and Eldorado. Photo by Blake Wood.
The count of meets in New Mexico is down a little this weekend. And, it appears there are may be a few teams taking the weekend off the regroup a little. But, there's still enough cross country action around the state to be had.
Thursday night gets things started for the weekend with the Artesia Invitational. It's not difficult to predict that the meet will be populated with southeastern New Mexico programs. So far this season, results out of this corner of the state have been tough to come by. Here's hoping for a break in that pattern this weekend.
Outside of Artesia, I'm not seeing anything scheduled for southern New Mexico this weekend. Is this correct?
The Santa Fe Indian School meet at Cochiti Elementary School in Cochiti figures to pick up their share of the smaller school programs. Mora would be on that list. And, any chance you get to see Alonzo Chavez run is a good chance. Laguna-Acoma will be back in action at this meet on Saturday as well.
There are two mid-sized invitationals in Albuquerque this weekend.
Eldorado goes to Bear Canyon to host Cleveland, Cibola, La Cueva, St. Pius X, plus a few more. This may be the best convergence of girls teams in New Mexico since the UNM Lobo Invite at the beginning of the season. Since the Sartans have been out of commission for a couple of weeks, this meet should provide a good read on their progress. They could be rusty or they could be ready to blow the cork on a great one. Eldorado figures to be the team wearing targets on their backs. The boys race at this one alos figures to be very competitive. Cleveland, however, could be in the mood to show some folks that they're better than the margin of five points that they ended up winning by at Albuquerque Academy last week.
The other Albuquerque area meet will be hosted by Volcano Vista. The Hawks play host to a somewhat smaller set of schools, to include the Bosque School, Santa Fe Prep, West Las Vegas, Bernalillo, and the each of the APS schools not headed to Eldorado's meet.
Not far out of Albuquerque, Valencia plays host to their own meet, but I have no word on the composition of teams headed into Valencia.
Gallup resurrects an annual bit of tradition at the Curtis Williams Invitational. Under Coach Williams, the Bengals were a certified dynasty, and this meet purposely evokes the memories of his tenure as the school's cross country coach. Most of western New Mexico will find their way to this one.
Northwestern New Mexico has a decision to make. Head to Gallup for the Curtis Williams meet, or cross the border into Colorado for the Montezuma-Cortez Ancient Trails meet just outside of Cortez. Competition will probably be a bit more intense at Gallup, but both meets have their attractive qualities.
Think of this as your invitation to send photos and meet results to this site at the e-mail address in the lower left corner of this page. I've also been known to read the brief meet summaries forwarded along to me and use those to make a note or two about the meet in a weekend review kind of article. I very much appreicate the flow of information.