Runners inspire by putting it all on the line

Nov. 7—One of the best things you'll see in high school sports is the small chunk of real estate that lies just beyond the finish line at a cross-country meet. It's in that space that you see the true effort a student-athlete puts into his or her craft, where the very limit of physical exertion is on display for everyone to see.

The state championship meet was held over the weekend at Albuquerque Academy. About 30 feet beyond the finish line was a 55-gallon trash can that became the go-to spot for athletes trying their best to keep their lunch down. The space in between was filled with volunteers, trainers and NMAA staff members waiting to catch runners pushing themselves to the point of exhaustion — and sometimes beyond.

For the sports purist, it's one of the more inspiring things you'll see. The same legs that carried a runner over the course of a 5-kilometer race suddenly become unstable, sending many into the arms of people waiting to keep them from falling.

Saturday gave us eight races over the course of about six hours. Dozens of runners crumpled while a handful went straight to that trash can. For athletes who spend months training and fine-tuning their craft, they showed that "leaving it all out there," is a living, breathing thing.

----The Class 3A girls race at the State Cross-Country Championships on Saturday almost turned into a scoring mess, if not for one enterprising reporter.

As the runners hit the 1-mile mark of the race, the online results from liverunningresults.com showed seven Santa Fe Indian School runners in the top 10 and nine in the top 20.

Wait, what?

Any coach would pause at that because only a maximum of seven runners are allowed to run for each school at state. It turns out all of the Santa Fe Prep runners were listed as SFIS runners.

A New Mexican reporter noticed the error and informed New Mexico Activities Association officials about it. Kudos to the organization because the appropriate schools were attached to the appropriate runners the time teams hit the second mile of the race.

In in the end, SFIS ended up winning the state title with a 40 point low score, beating the Blue Griffins by 16 points for the crown.

----It was almost a historic moment for state cross-country runners. When Albuquerque Sandia's Seven West won the 5A boys race in a time of 15 minutes, 4.38 seconds, it was as close as a big-school runner has come to breaking that barrier on a 5-kilometer race course.

Interestingly, running under 15 minutes on a 5-kilometer course has not happened yet.

In 2009, Kyle Pittman ran the course at Rio Rancho High School in 14 minutes, 59.60 seconds in the Class 4A race, but former Rams head coach Sal Gonzales said the course that year was less than 3 miles. It wasn't until 2013, he added, the distance was a true 5-kilometer race.

The last big-school runner to win in under 15 minutes just so happens to be Santa Fe High head coach Peter Graham. When he was a senior for the Demons in 1979, Graham won the race in 14:50, but it was on a 3-mile track as opposed to the current configuration. The following year, the NMAA changed the distance to 5 kilometers, adding a tenth of a mile for runners to traverse.

----Attendance at college football games nationwide is on the decline — but not at New Mexico State.

Attendance at NMSU is up 41 percent over the 2021 season, going from an average of 11,845 last year to 16,701 this fall. That's the ninth-biggest jump in the Football Bowl Subdivision.

Among those in front with bigger increases are obvious, like Kansas, Duke and UConn. Another is San Diego State, which ended a two-year stay in Carson, Calif., to move into its new on-campus stadium this fall. The Aztecs' attendance is up 185 percent from last season, which makes sense.

NMSU's Oct. 15 win over New Mexico drew 20,132, giving the Aggies a much-needed boost.

The biggest dip is Nevada's 28 percent drop from a year ago. In fact, five of the top 17 year-to-year drops are schools in the Mountain West. That includes UNM, whose 7.6 percent dip (to 15,097 per game) is the 14th biggest in the FBS.

Going back further, the Lobos have seen a 16.3 percent drop over the past five years, the ninth-biggest of all FBS programs.

----Upsets in the high school football playoffs are not that common. The first weekend of the 11-man playoffs didn't offer many outside of one possible exception in the Class 3A opening round — and, on paper, it wasn't an upset at all.

Seeded No. 5, Thoreau held off No. 12 Hope Christian, 19-13, to reach this week's quarterfinals at No. 4 St. Michael's. It's hard to call a 5 over a 12 an upset, but this one felt like it based on the reaction of people who track such things.

If you've followed 3A football this season you'd be quick to point out Thoreau was never seriously considered a top-five team, let alone top-10. The final regular season coaches poll had the Hawks an unofficial No. 12, well short of the 10th spot that went to Hatch. When state pairings were announced it came as a surprise to see Thoreau seeded in front of teams like Raton and West Las Vegas.

The Dons completely dismantled the Hawks in September, winning 54-0 in Las Vegas. Thoreau is now 9-2 but only one of those wins (Newcomb) is against a team currently with a winning record.

The Horsemen and Hawks will kick things off at 1 p.m. Saturday in Santa Fe, with the winner facing either No. 1 Socorro or No. 9 Cobre in the state semifinals.

----And then there were two.

As volleyball hits the postseason, only two teams managed to survive the regular season unscathed. Class 5A's Albuquerque La Cueva and Melrose of Class 1A finished 23-0 for the season and earned top seeds for their respective class' tournaments.

Laguna-Acoma got to 21-0 before losing Saturday in five games to Santa Fe Indian School at home Saturday.