All Local, All The Time
All Local, All The Time
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CROSS COUNTRY Taylor James (Niwot) is on the Cross Country roster for Stanford University this fall, but has not officially competed for the Cardinal yet. James, a freshman, will have an opportunity to run her trademark events (200M, 400M, 800M, Mile) during the indoor and outdoor track seasons. Her Stanford biography notes that her grandmother, Jana Veverkova (200M, 4x100M), and grandfather, Zdenek Veverka (triple jump), are both Czech Republic track and field national record-holders. Eva...
Fifth-year Niwot head coach Kelly Christensen is grateful that the 2020 high school cross country season is proceeding, even if in a modified form, but he was also quick to acknowledge that, like everything else that it hasn't cancelled or postponed this year, the COVID-19 pandemic has made the sport more difficult for everyone involved. "It's everything, whether it's the schedule, trying to plan Covid practices, debating whether or not we're going to cut rosters, or finding races. I would say...
We asked the departing seniors of the girls track team to reflect on their time at Niwot and share their post-graduation plans. Samrawit Dishon, Distance What are your plans after graduation? I plan to attend the University of New Mexico and major in Psychology. Before it was canceled, what were you looking forward to most about the 2020 season I was looking forward to doing a lot of big things with my teammates. What is your favorite memory or what do you consider a career highlight from your t...
It was another crowded National Letter of Intent signing ceremony at Niwot, as seven athletes made official commitments to collegiate programs on Nov. 13. Lexi Crow, Black Hills State University Lexi Crow's collegiate soccer ambitions may be taking her away from Colorado, but the picturesque campus of Black Hills State University in Spearfish, S.D. will be like home away from home, according to the Cougar midfielder. "There's going to be mountains there, and open spaces, and it's green, so it's...
The Colorado state cross country meet has produced some amazing athletic achievements over the years, but few top Niwot's in the 2019 Class 4A championships, held Oct. 26 at the Norris-Penrose Center in Colorado Springs. Led by individual winners Samrawit Dishon and Cruz Culpepper, the Cougars emerged from a highly competitive field to capture both team titles and complete the first four-title sweep for a single school since 1995 (an honor Niwot shared with Lyons on the day). Afterwards,...
Niwot senior Samrawit Dishon was holding on to a slim lead heading into the toughest stretch of the state cross country race when she got a boost from an unexpected source-her closest competitors. "It was kind of cool to have them both there like that," Dishon said of Eagle Valley sisters Joslin and Samantha Blair, who trailed the front-runner by just a few meters. "They were hyping each other up and talking to each other, and I thought, 'This is great. I know they're not talking to me, but I'm...
There wasn't much mystery about the team winner of the Class 4A Region 3 girls cross country race, after Niwot's top five runners crossed the finish line at Denver's City Park a good 30 seconds ahead of any other competitors. That resulted in a rare perfect score of 15 for the Cougars, which head coach Kelly Christensen feels is a good way to close out the 2019 regular season. "A perfect score is a perfect score, no matter where you get it or who you get it against or whatever the conditions,"...
Niwot cross country has emerged as one of the top programs in Colorado, and now it can claim its spot among the best teams in the southwestern U.S., after an impressive performance at the Nike Desert Twilight Festival in Casa Grande, Ariz. on Sept. 27. Paced by senior Samrawit Dishon, the Cougars finished first overall in the elite girls 5000M race, with 80 team points. Dishon posted a personal best time of 17 minutes 8.02 seconds to capture third place, followed by junior Taylor James...
It will be no small task for the 2019 Niwot cross country program to top the success of last season, especially with the names Layla Roebke, Ares Reading, and Maggie Smith gracing college rosters this year. But that’s the expectation of fourth-year head coach Kelly Christensen, and the results from the Cougars’ season debut at the VistaNation 2Mile Invitational lend credence to his claims. With top finishers in four of the six races at the exclusive meet, Niwot seems to have more than eno...
The Niwot track & field team put on a show at this year’s Class 4A state championships, and now the Niwot runners have been showing off across the country. From the Music City Distance Carnival in Nashville to the Great Southwest Classic in Albuquerque, the Cougars have been going up against the nation’s best and often coming out on top. Music City Distance Carnival, Nashville Two weeks after she won a second straight state title in the 800-meter run, Niwot sophomore Taylor James posted a per...
The boys may have waited until the final event of the meet to claim their team title, but for the Niwot girls, the Class 4A track and field championship was theirs to lose from the start. Shortly before 9 a.m. on the opening morning of the three-day state meet at Jeffco Stadium in Lakewood, Niwot junior Samrawit Dishon crossed the finish line of the girls 3200 meter race with a season-best time of 10 minutes, 53.76 seconds to claim second place overall and score the Cougars’ first eight p...
Niwot track and field team is sending a robust contingent of athletes to this year’s Class 4A state championships, which open at Jeffco Stadium in Lakewood on Thursday, May 16. On the boys side, Niwot will have competitors in all but a handful of events, including junior Cruz Culpepper, the top seed in the 800m run. The Cougars also have the top seeded boys 4x800 relay, and Nolan Johan nabbed a pair of top-five seeds in hurdles. In field events, junior Milo Ostwald made the cut in both long a...
It’s hard to top a state championship for drama, but the Niwot girls’ performance at the Nike Cross National Championships on Dec. 1 may have come close. Seeded 22nd of the 22 teams invited, the Cougars finished fifth overall on the day and cemented their status as one of the most surprising high school cross country teams of 2018. One person who wasn’t surprised was Niwot cross country head coach Kelly Christensen, who said that his team knew they were better than their last-place seed. “Afte...
With barely time to catch their breath after winning the 2018 Class 4A state championship meet late last month, members of the Niwot girls cross country team traveled to Casa Grande, AZ, for the Nike Cross Nationals Southwest Regional on Nov. 17. Thousands of high school runners from teams in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah competed in the meet, one of eight regional qualifying events for the 15th annual Nike Cross National Championships coming up on Dec. 1 in Portland, Ore....
Long months of hard work and sacrifice paid off in the most satisfying way for the Niwot girls cross country team at this year’s Class 4A state championships, held Oct. 27 at the Norris-Penrose Center in Colorado Springs. Led by one-two finishers Layla Roebke and Taylor James, the Cougars ended with 47 points to claim their first-ever state title, a feat made possible thanks to the unusually strong team bond forged during a grueling regular season, according to junior Joelle McDonald, who was N...
Battling unseasonable heat and a very hilly course, the Niwot boys and girls cross country teams both took first place at the RE-1J District cross country meet at Sunset golf course on Sept. 12. Four of the Niwot girls (Samrawit Dishon, Maggie Smith, Taylor James, and Joelle McDonald), finished among the top five, holding hands as they crossed the finish line. The boys top finishers were Caleb Bishop (3rd), Luke Robinson (5th), and Jack Kenkel (6th). Cougar freshman Zane Bergen was also among...
For a sure sign that the Niwot boys track team is having a special season, look no further than the Northern League championships, held May 4-5 at Everly Montgomery Stadium in Longmont. Behind surprisingly strong performances in the sprints and jumping events, the Cougars scored 151 team points to claim the 2018 conference title, a feat Niwot head track coach Maurice Henriques called “a great accomplishment for our program.” “Being here for eight years, we’ve never a Northern Conference meet,...
After her breakout cross country season, which included an impressive win in the regional meet, it would be easy to pigeonhole Niwot freshman Taylor James as mainly a distance runner. In her inaugural track and field season, however, the ninth-grader has shown a surprising depth of talent for both sprinting and jumping. Case in point is her performance at the exclusive Mullen Invitational, where she extended her streak of high jump wins to five with a mark of 5’6”, both a personal best and the s...
Even on St. Patrick’s Day, it wasn’t hard to spot the green-clad Niwot athletes competing in the Windsor Invitational, as they were almost always out in front of the pack. On a sunny spring day, tailor made for running fast, both veterans and newcomers set new personal bests in many of the meet’s sprint events, helping both the boys and girls to their second top-ten finishes of the still-early season. “It’s a perfect day,” Niwot head coach Maurice Henriques said. Now in his eighth year, Henri...
Following his team’s fourth-place finish at the Class 4A State cross country meet last Saturday, Niwot junior Benjamin Bi couldn’t hide his frustration. “We could have done a lot better,” said the junior, who finished 28th with a time of 16 minutes, 38 seconds. “I think we choked a little bit. There really isn’t anything else. We prepared all year. It just wasn’t our day.” Buoyed by a strong performance at the Regional meet in Lyons, the Cougars had their sights set on a top-three finis...
Niwot freshman Taylor James took top honors and junior Maggie Smith put an exclamation point on her comeback this season with an impressive fourth-place finish at the Class 4A Region 3 meet at Lyons H.S. last Thursday. With a time of 19 minutes 27 seconds, Smith finished right behind Valor Christian runners Keely Jones and Taylor Whitfield (2nd and 3rd) to post her first top-five time of the year. Smith and freshman James settled in at the head of the pack early, and led as a tandem until James...
Since their breakout performances in Arizona last month, the Niwot cross country teams have been gearing up for the postseason, which kicks off this week with the Class 4A Region 3 meet at Lyons High on Thursday. The top four teams in that race will advance to the state meet later this month in Colorado Springs. “We’re not going to make a big deal out of beating anyone and everyone,” said Niwot head coach Kelly Christensen of his team’s mindset heading into the regional qualifier, where the Coug...
The Niwot cross country teams turned some heads at the Desert Twilight XC Festival in Casa Grande, AZ last weekend with surprise third-place finishes for both the boys and the girls. More than 100 teams from Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas competed in the meet, which is held on a lighted course after sundown. Niwot’s runners ran in the Sweepstakes race, which featured more than 200 runners from the region’s top cross country programs. Led by freshman Taylor James, who fin...
Running as a pack, the Niwot boys and girls cross country teams both took first place at the RE-1J District meet in convincing fashion. Paced by sophomore Cruz Culpepper, the Niwot boys had five of the race’s ten fastest times to take first place with 21 points. Lyons was second on the day, with 58 points, followed by Mead (60) and Erie (104). Culpepper took second overall with a time of 17 minutes, 51.79 seconds, followed by seniors Ethan Steiner (17:53.15) in third, Oskar Wells (17.55.64) in f...
Niwot head cross country coach Kelly Christensen said he is out of the prediction business after his team’s dispiriting finish at last year’s Class 4A state championship meet. “I don’t want to say where I think they’ll be, because last year I said that and we had kind of a meltdown at state,” said the second year head coach. “So I’m just going to keep them healthy and keep them rolling.” But even if he won’t say so explicitly, it’s clear that Christensen believes Niwot has the potential for a s...
It’s no secret that the Niwot girls track team had its sights set on another state title this year. After a dispiriting third-place finish in 2016 following three successive state championships, this year’s squad buckled down, putting in months of grueling workouts, determined to regain the team’s customary place on top of the championship podium. As they cruised through the 2017 regular season, capturing one meet title after another with machine-like precision, the slip-ups that doomed their...
The Niwot girls track and field team can add another title to its already lengthy list: 2017 Northern League champions. In yet another dominating performance, the Cougars outscored their nearest opponent by more than 60 points to capture first place at last weekend’s conference meet, winning nine of the 19 events, including all three sprints and both hurdles races. Senior Alexis Carroll and junior Mary Gillett combined for five of the Cougars’ nine individual titles, and between them set thr...
It was business as usual for the Niwot girls track team at the Stutler Bowl Twilight Invitational, held April 24 at Cherry Creek High School. Against a talented field comprised of several of Colorado’s top-ranked Class 4A and 5A squads, the Niwot girls scored 98.7 points on the day to edge out Rocky Mountain (96) for the team title. It was also business as usual for Niwot junior Mary Gillett, who finished the day with multiple individual titles, including the 100-meter dash (12.38 seconds), t...
The Boulder County Championship meet has been a mid-April fixture on the calendar of local track and field teams for more than four decades, but no team has made its presence felt there more than the Niwot girls. At this year’s event, held April 15 at Everly-Montgomery Field, the Cougars stormed to their eighth straight BoCo title, winning nine individual events and scoring 172 team points, nearly double that of second-place Broomfield (94). In a season already filled with personal bests and m...
The Niwot girls track and field team turned in another superb performance at last week’s Lyons Invitational, capturing seven event titles on their way to a fifth straight team win. Junior Mary Gillett nabbed two wins on the day, setting a meet record in the 400-meter run with a time of 57.16 seconds and posting another meet record in the long jump (16 feet, 17 inches). Senior Alexis Carroll’s sub-15 time of 14.96 in the event’s 100-meter hurdles was good for both first and the meet’s new mar...
The Niwot girls track and field team continued to dominate the local competition, picking up wins at the St. Vrain Re-1J District meet on March 23 and at the Broomfield Shootout on March 25. The boys also fared well at the District meet, finishing second out of nine teams, and placed 23rd at the Broomfield meet, in a 33-team field that included several Class 5A schools. It was another impressive week for junior Mary Gillett and her senior teammate Alexis Carroll. At the St. Vrain meet, held...
In a sport where results are measured in thousandths of seconds, and athletes are judged by measured individual results, it can be hard to quantify abstract concepts like unity and team chemistry. But that doesn’t mean such things aren’t critical to a team’s success. When members of the Niwot track teams take the field at their events this season, Head Coach Maurice Henriques wants each one to remember that the whole team has their back. “Our theme this year is loyalty,” he explained. “You’ll s...
