It’s the offseason for Fort Lewis College sports without a game for nearly two months, so there’s no better time to look back at the previous school year and assess how the Skyhawks did.
There were plenty of highlights and low moments since the beginning of the school year in August. Whether it was game-winning goals, baskets and runs, dominant performances, heartbreaking defeats or blowout losses, Skyhawks experienced it all.
But the final scores and records of the seasons don’t always show the full stories. There are injuries, coaching changes and plenty of storylines that aren’t visible with just the final results.
So, let’s take a look back at each team and grade their seasons. Since FLC has so many teams, this article will be broken down into three parts for the three seasons. Since the spring season was the most recent, that’s what Part 1 will cover.
Grade: B+
The FLC track and field teams had the most success of any Skyhawk spring sports teams, despite being the youngest spring program.
Head coach Dalton Graham and associate head coach Gracen Key did a great job of recruiting talent and keeping it without any tradition. The women’s team has only been around since 2023 and the men’s team since 2024.
This season, the men and women were represented at the NCAA Division II outdoor track and field championships with Hannah Hartwell and Elijah Smith. Hartwell finished her spectacular Skyhawks career with First-Team All-American honors and Smith made Second-Team All-American.
It’s super impressive to have a program that’s less than five years old have two All-Americans. That’s great recruiting by the coaches to find talented runners who are excited to put a program on the map.
That’s the big reason why track and field gets a B+ grade. FLC is laying the foundation for the program in these early years, so it wouldn’t have been a shock if they didn’t have any All-Americans.
The only reason it isn’t in the A grade is that FLC could only get two runners to the national championships, when it looked like there was a chance for more at the end of the season. A lot of the best teams in the country are in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference and those schools qualify their entire teams. That’s the next step for the Skyhawks.
Grade: C
Skyhawks golf can go under the radar. It’s not what you think of when it comes to team sports, and its played in the fall and the spring, with the national championships taking place in the spring. Plus, FLC hasn’t had a ton of success as a team or on an individual level on the national stage.
The 2025-2026 school year wasn’t very noteworthy for FLC. Both teams finished fifth out of seven schools in the RMAC championships. The big bright spot was the play of redshirt junior Traejan Andrews, who finished fifth at the RMAC Championships and tied-10th at the NCAA South Central Regional. Sophomore Peyton Gibby also finished tied-eighth in the RMAC championships.
Besides Andrews and Gibby’s strong finishes to the season, the FLC seasons were pretty pedestrian. The Skyhawks women didn’t finish better than third at a tournament, and the men didn’t finish better than fifth. Both squads were routinely in the middle or near the bottom of tournament standings.
That’s why a C grade seems logical. Both squads were average or below average, with a few individual bright spots. The men also went through a coaching change, which never helps, but golf is one of the better sports for players to get through a coaching change because these players’ swings and games are good enough where a new coach won’t mess it up.
Grade: D
The FLC softball program feels like its stuck in neutral. The Skyhawks haven’t had a winning record since 2012 and a winning record in the RMAC since 2021.
This past season wasn’t great, with FLC finishing 15-39 overall and 14-30 in the RMAC. The Skyhawks finished ninth out of 12 schools in the RMAC and finished tied-ninth in the conference with the most overall wins.
Like most teams, you can point to some lost experience via graduation, but the problem is that head coach Paige Rhodes’ teams have been consistently mediocre in her three years, with a 25% winning percentage and a 30% winning percentage in the RMAC.
A D grade seems appropriate for the softball program. The Skyhawks had some truly poor moments, including a 19-game losing streak and an 1-18 record on the road. FLC was near the bottom of the RMAC once again, and there doesn’t seem like much momentum for the program without a proven winning head coach.
Grade: D-
The FLC girls lacrosse program has struggled heavily over the last two years, so it wasn’t an easy decision to give out a D- instead of an F.
After a 1-15 overall record and a 0-10 mark in the RMAC in 2025, the Skyhawks went 0-12 overall and 0-10 in the RMAC in 2026. FLC’s closest loss was by four goals, with 10 of the 12 losses by double digits. That’s terrible.
However, there is some added context that bumps the F to a D-. It was head coach JoJo Lutz’s first season leading the Skyhawks and as a head coach. She’s a young head coach who didn’t have her own recruiting class last season.
All the non-freshmen on the team were on at least their second coach in two years, some of them their third coach in three years. That’s not easy to do in a sport that hasn’t been prevalent in youth sports in this part of the country for that long.
It’s also not a secret that FLC isn’t loaded with resources to give its nonrevenue sports compared to its conference peers.
So, a -D it is. But another winless season and this grade will drop down to an F.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
