It couldn’t have gone much better for the Durango High School cross country program. The Demons boys and girls teams both finished first at the inaugural Durango Invitational at Durango Mesa Park on Saturday.
“It was a really fantastic meet,” Durango cross country head coach Michael Fadil said. “The volunteers were terrific, the other coaches were terrific, our coaching staff was terrific and the other coaches from the other teams were terrific. It was a beautiful day. The Durango Mesa Park Foundation folks were absolutely fantastic. They’ve been helping us throughout this whole process since they had the mountain bike Derby the next day and we borrowed a lot of stuff they had. It went really smoothly. It was a great weather. I really couldn't have asked for more.”
There were eight schools on the girls side and nine schools on the boys side. The teams’ scores were determined by the combined finishing positions of the top five runners on each team.
The Durango girls finished first with a score of 24. Sandia Prep finished second with a 59. Shiprock High School finished third with a 68.
On the boys side, the Demons finished first with a team score of 20. Dolores High School finished second with a 64 and Shiprock finished third with a 75.
“It was a fun meet but a hard course,” Fadil said. “Then you look at the times, they’re 1 minute 20 seconds, 1 minute 30 or 40 seconds slower than last week, which was not surprising. It was a really challenging course with a lot of different terrain. But I think everyone liked it. It was a fair cross country course, but certainly not a fast cross country course.”
Durango sophomore Lacy Ruggiero led the Demons girls in the 5-kilometer race with a time of 21 minutes and 58.13 seconds. Kate Henderson won the race with a 20:28.59 for Sandia Prep.
Senior Bryn Aggeler was the second-best Demon and finished fourth overall with a 22:49.85. Junior Ayumi Lambert finished sixth overall with a 23:15.47. Freshman Mena Cerwin finished seventh with a 23:47.33 and freshman Maeve Daley finished eighth with a 23:58.77.
Fadil was happy to see first-year runners Cerwin and Daley step up to provide good depth for the Demons as they continue to deal with injuries.
Durango senior AJ Bonanno finished second on the boys side with an 18:31.58 for his 5K. Kaden Lapahie from Shiprock won the boys race with a finishing time of 18:13.32.
Freshman Caden Voss finished third with an 18:31.58. Sophomore Rocco Enea was fourth with a 19:08.89. Sophomore Jack Purcell finished fifth with a 19:19.14. Fadil was happy to see Purcell return after being sick last week. Junior Slader Schweitz rounded out the top five for the Demons with a sixth-place overall finish with a time of 19:22.74.
Ignacio’s Trace Crane finished ninth overall for Ignacio High School with a 20:13.56. James Martin was the only other Ignacio runner inside the top 20 with a 16th-place finish with a 21:13.97.
Next up for Durango is the Joe Vigil Invitational in Alamosa on Saturday.
Demons softball beats Cedaredge for third-straight win
Only two weeks into the 2024 season, the Durango softball team has already equaled last year’s win total. The Demons picked up a 9-8 win at Cedaredge on Friday to improve to 4-4 overall.
The Demons jumped out to a 5-2 lead after four innings before Cedaredge tied the game 7-7 going into the seventh inning. Then Durango prevailed in the seventh to win its third-straight game.
“We had one bad inning where we had multiple errors and they got a lot closer than it felt most of the game,” Durango softball head coach Sara Clair said. “Jenna pitched awesome again. She continues to do really well on the mound and circle for us. It was also really cool to see … the bottom of the lineup really hit the ball well.”
Junior pitcher Jenna Glueck earned another win on the mound. She had five strikeouts while allowing 17 hits and eight runs.
Senior Karina Trujillo had an excellent game going 4-4 hitting with two runs and two RBIs. Sophomore Avery Clair went 3-4 from the plate with a home run and two RBIs. Sophomore Alexis Wood and freshman Abigail Gordon each went 2-4 from the plate.
Clair said her team has become more confident and comfortable playing defense which was the missing piece earlier in the season
Durango takes its three-game winning streak on the road to play two games at Grand Junction on Saturday.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
