The Durango High School cross country teams traveled down to Albuquerque on Saturday to compete against some different competitors in the University of New Mexico Invitational. The Demons boys and girls teams each finished fifth out of 17 schools at the 5-kilometer race on the University of New Mexico North Golf Course.
“Both teams are continuing to perform really well,” Durango cross country head coach Michael Fadil said. “I've only been here a couple of years and I've been told the New Mexico competition usually isn't as strong as Colorado. So it ended up being a pretty competitive meet with a lot of good performances. The course, even though it was a couple of 1,000 feet lower than the week before in Alamosa, times were fairly comparable across the board. The boys ran a little faster this week, the girls ran a little slower.”
The UNM Invitational sits at 5,085 feet above sea level. Fadil said the course had more grass than at last week’s Alamosa meet which slowed the runners down a bit.
On the Demons’ boys team, senior AJ Bonanno once again led Durango by finishing 17th out of 140 runners in 16 minutes and 32.95 seconds. Rio Rancho’s Charlie Vause won the boys race in 15:01.29. Freshman Caden Voss wasn’t far behind in 19th, finishing in 16:37.28.
Behind Bonanno and Voss was junior Slader Schweitz, who finished 33rd in a PR 17:04.56. Sophomore Rocco Enea also had a PR finishing 38th in 17:11:42. Sophomore Jack Purcell finished in 40th with a season-best time of 17:15:17.
On the girls side, Miller Middle School eighth-grader Zia Fadil competed in the UNM Invitational and finished as the fastest Durango girl. Colorado High School Activities Association (CHSAA), doesn’t allow eighth graders to compete in varsity events. New Mexico does. Therefore, Fadil could compete in the race but didn’t count toward the Durango team score.
Fadil finished third out of 115 varsity girls runners in 18:37.09. Gianna Rahmer from Eldorado won the girls varsity 5K race in 17:50.90.
“She was excited,” Fadil said about his daughter. “She’d rather race 5Ks than 3Ks. We train her between a 3K and a 5K, she's not doing as much volume as some of the high school kids for the most part. I tell people, she only runs two days a week for workouts and then do other stuff the other days so she's not doing as much. But she was really happy. It was nice for her to at least be in the race with her future teammates. I think she enjoyed that now, even though she couldn't race for the team.”
The top official Demon girls runner once again was sophomore Lacy Ruggiero. She finished seventh in 19:16.70. Behind her was senior Bryn Aggeler in 21st in 20:16.91. Junior Mira Quayle finished 32nd in 20:42.75.
Fadil was happy to see Quayle competing again after she missed two weeks with a leg injury. Fadil said Quayle felt no pain and he thought she had a great performance coming back from that.
Junior Ayumi Lambert finished 40th in 20:56.76 and her teammate sophomore Olivia Glover finished 41st in 20:57.43.
Durango travels to Grand Junction for the Southwest League Championships on Friday.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
