There is a decorated history of sports in and around La Plata County. From championship-winning teams to Olympians and several national and world champions in a wide array of athletic activities. In 2017, it was time for the next generation of stars and championship-caliber teams to emerge and etch their place alongside some of the greatest sports stories in Southwest Colorado history.
Bayfield High School’s football team claimed its third state championship in school history and second in the last three years. Sepp Kuss’ decision to ride a road bike full time paid off in his biggest breakthrough season and two Durango cycling stars decided to retire after standout careers. As some of those stars said goodbye, plenty more said hello and are sure to dominate the headlines in 2018.
Before taking a look forward at next year, here’s a look back at the 10 stories that stole the show in 2017.
History was written when the Bayfield High School football team won the Colorado High School Activities Association Class 2A state championship in a 34-7 rout of La Junta. More than 5,000 people filled and surrounded Wolverine Country Stadium in a record-setting game on and off the field. The game had more fans than any other high school sporting event in the history of Southwestern Colorado, and the Wolverines etched their school’s name into the state record books.
With nine sacks in the state championship game, the Wolverines finished the year with 65 sacks to claim the single-season state record regardless of classification. With four sacks in the title game alone, senior Ryan Phelps finished with 24 sacks to capture the individual single-season record.
These Wolverines (13-0) were led by a defense that recorded eight shutouts, including a school record five in a row going into the title game. Hayden Farmer’s 35 touchdown passes in the season were more than any other quarterback’s career record. A well-rounded team behind athletes such as Hunter Killough, Carl Heide and Dax Snooks helped the team hoist the state championship trophy for the second time in three years, giving many of the seniors two rings to proudly display in a championship-worthy community that supported the Wolverines every game, home and away.
En route to the title, the Wolverines earned their first ever win against La Plata County rival Durango, moving Bayfield’s all-time record against the Demons to 1-14-1. The 20-13 victory was sealed by a Killough interception on the Bayfield 1-yard line on Durango’s final drive.
Weeks after graduating from the University of Colorado at Boulder, Durango’s Sepp Kuss took the professional road cycling scene by storm with a 10th-place finish on the Stage 5 climb up Mt. Baldy at the Tour of California. Two weeks later, he won the home Iron Horse Bicycle Classic by chasing down and pulling away from Albuquerque’s Mark Aasmundstad halfway through the final climb up Molas Pass.
Kuss was far from done. He earned his first yellow jersey as the overall leader of a major race at the Tour of Utah and went on to finish ninth in the seven-stage event. He then finished second overall at the Tour of Alberta and landed a two-year contract from Team LottoNL-Jumbo for the 2018 and 2019 seasons. He will move to Europe to join the Netherlands-based team and has hopes of riding the Vuelta a España within the next two years. For Kuss, one of the more promising young climbers on a road bike in the U.S., 2017 was only the beginning.
If Kuss’ 2017 was only the beginning for him, it was the end for one of the riders he grew up considering a hero. Todd Wells, a three-time Olympian with double-digit national championships to his name, decided to officially retire from full-time professional mountain biking at the end of 2017.
He moved to Durango from New York in 1995 and called Durango home throughout his illustrious 22-year career that included national titles with Fort Lewis College before his professional days. Wells still calls Durango home, and he is in the mortgage business now with Sinberg Capital Lending. He’s also staying active on his bike for a few races a year and operates a coaching business.
They say all good things must come to an end. For the Fort Lewis College men’s basketball team the last three years, that hasn’t been the case.
One year after going 28-4 and 19-3 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference with one win in the NCAA South Central Regional tournament, the Skyhawks went 26-7 and 18-4 in the RMAC with another improbable 94-90 overtime win in the NCAA tournament against Texas power Tarleton State.
The Skyhawks lost some key players, including All-American talent Joshua Blaylock, after the 2016-17 season, but head coach Bob Pietrack reloaded with high-level recruits who have helped lead the team to a 9-2 start. The Skyhawks have maintained their home-court dominance by going 38-1 at Whalen Gymnasium since Pietrack took over as head coach before the 2015-16 season. The team also has been ranked in the National Association of Basketball Coaches Division II Coaches Poll for a program record 34 consecutive weeks.
The Fort Lewis College women’s basketball team has always been strong under head coach Jason Flores, but he earned his biggest win yet at FLC when he landed prized recruit Vivian Gray out of Argyle, Texas.
Gray, a 6-foot-1 do-it-all forward, spurned offers from elite Division I programs to join her older sister, Olivia, in a Skyhawks uniform. The No. 27 overall recruit in the country a year ago, Gray has brought an edge to an already deep Skyhawks team with eyes on a deep run in the NCAA tournament for the next four seasons.
FLC is ranked inside the top 25, and Gray has averaged more than 15 points and eight rebounds per game to go with eye-popping statistics in nearly every category.
Wells wasn’t the only Durango cycling icon to call it quits in 2017. Elite women’s road cyclist Carmen Small retired at age 37, only one year removed from winning the USA Cycling time trial national championship.
A concussion suffered March 11 in a race in the Netherlands promoted Small’s decision, though she was working toward full-time directorship and moving away from full-time riding. Still suffering lingering effects from the concussion, Small returned to Denmark where she is now a race director for Team Virtu Cycling. Small also is the Athletes’ Advisory Council representative for USA Cycling and is thriving in her new role mentoring other riders. Small also ws key in launching The Cyclists’ Alliance, a union to advocate for women in professional cycling.
The Durango High School Demons heard the buzzer sound and celebrated a rare trip to the Great 8 of the CHSAA Class 4A boys basketball state tournament. The only problem was a 3-pointer released by Evergreen after the buzzer had sounded and the clock had hit 0:00.
Evergreen’s Bridger Tenney launched a 3-pointer after the buzzer, and the referees counted the shot to send the game into overtime tied 43-43. With the Demons up one in the final seconds of overtime, Evergreen’s Rhys Sayler hit a jump shot at the buzzer to send the Cougars to a 52-51 win and end the Demons’ season in heartbreaking fashion.
Durango lost 11 seniors from that team and had a summer of coaching confusion after Alan Batiste stepped down after the season but was named coach again later in the summer. Batiste and the Demons were left wondering what could have happened at the Great 8, as the Demons finished the year 21-5 overall and 6-2 to win their first 5A/4A Southwestern League title in a decade to claim the No. 4 seed in the state tournament it was prematurely bounced out from.
Kilian Jornet claimed a fourth consecutive men’s race victory at the Hardrock Hundred Endurance Run in Silverton, only two months after he summited Mount Everest twice in six days without the aid of supplemental oxygen.
Jornet, of Spain, didn’t have an easy race, though. He dislocated his shoulder early in the 100.5-mile race and ran an estimated 87 miles with the injury. He conquered the race that features 66,050 feet of elevation gain with 13 passes greater than 12,000 feet, including 14,048-foot Handies Peak. With his arm wrapped and weaved through the arm of his running vest, Jornet maintained a smile throughout to win in 24 hours, 32 minutes, 19 seconds.
France’s Caroline Chaverot won the women’s race in 28:31:50 despite getting lost in the middle of the night near Telluride. She fell repeatedly and was torn up by the time she reached the finish line to kiss the rock. Still, Chaverot was fast enough to win by nearly an hour.
In his first year out of high school, Durango’s Christopher Blevins proved he will be a force in the cycling world for years to come.
On his mountain bike, Blevins contended for a USA Cycling short-track cross-country mountain bike national title in the elite field with top professionals. A flat tire late in the race was too much for the young gun to overcome, as teammate and fellow Durangoan Howard Grotts went on to win the race. Blevins bounced back and won the under-23 cross-country national championship the next day.
Blevins also won the U.S. Cup series this year, a four-city race over the course of the summer. He made the podium in every U.S. Cup event he entered and earned a nice bonus for the series overall win. Blevins also competed in road races with Axeon Hagens Berman, an International Cycling Union continental racing team based in the U.S.
Blevins was named to the USA Cycling national team in December.
Laura Thweatt went to London aiming to improve on her breakthrough success from the 2015 New York City Marathon. She finished sixth overall in the elite women’s race and was the top-American woman with a time of 2 hours, 25 minutes, 38 seconds on the 26.2-mile course.
Thweatt went on to be named to the U.S. team for the track and field world championships but had to withdraw months ahead of the competition because of a nagging pelvic injury. She received treatment all summer and is training again for another big year in 2018.
