Denver East Cross Country runners ran historically great performances on Saturday at the Colorado State Cross Country Championships. 

All week the forecast for Saturday had been for cold temperatures, which definitely came to fruition. All season the forecast for the Girls 5A Championship had been that Air Academy High School senior Bethany Michalak (US ranked #4) would run away with the title. Michalak, with a seasonal best more than 40 seconds better than the next fastest runner in the race, predictably went to the lead from the gun, hammering out a blistering 5:11 first mile. East junior Rosie Mucharsky, who had won the Cheyenne Mountain Stampede on the same course at the beginning of the season, had mostly fallen out of conversations speculating on who would win the state meet title after a series of less impressive races in the middle of the season. Mucharsky went through the first mile Saturday with a pack of runners trailing Michalak by 17 seconds. Heading up and then down the course’s primary hill, the bottom of which is just past halfway in the race, Mucharsky looked to be in great position for a top three finish while Michalak, still with a 16 second lead, started to show some cracks in her running form. Over the final mile, Mucharsky and a second runner from Air Academy quickly closed the gap on the leader, whose early pace was causing her to falter badly. With less than 800m to run it was clear that Mucharsky would run past the early leader; she took the lead near the creek crossing (about 400m from the finish) and won the state title by a stunning 17 seconds in a personal best 17:28. 

The 2023 Angel Girls Cross Country Team was already the fastest in school history (18:57 average time for top-5 runners). On Saturday they became the top-finishing team at State Meet of any Denver East squad in school history with their 7^th place finish. Off the start line, most of the Angel girls were conservative in their approach, and through the first mile all were probably outside the first 100 runners with the exception of Mucharsky and senior Grace Todd who was just outside the top-50. At the mile mark, the Angels were in 12^th place as a team with Todd in 52^nd, ninth graders Avery Johnson and Corrine Kennedy in 103^rd and 104^th and sophomore’s Julieta Ochoa and Scout Chomas in 105^th and 106^th. These Angels stayed active through the challenging second mile, and the Angels had moved up to 7^th as team, dropping their team score from 316 at the mile to 244 point at 2-miles, with Todd in 44^th, Kennedy 77^th, Johnson 78^th, Ochoa 80^th, and Choma 86^th. This pack would continue to close through the finish, the team score dropping another 37 points as Todd finished a career best 37^th (19:20) in her third State Meet, Kennedy 55^th in a personal best 19:37, Johnson 64^th in a personal best 19:49, Ochoa 78^th in 19:57, and Chomas 83^rd in 20:03.  Senior Sophia Shiroff finished 132^nd 21:42 in her second state meet.  Of the six teams ahead of the Angels, four are nationally ranked – confirmation of the accomplishment of their finish in what is probably the toughest division of any state meet in the country. 

Two Angel boys, junior Jonas Scudamore (110^th in 2021, 34^th in 2022) and senior Connor Beardsley (119^th in 2022), toed the line for the final championship race of the day; both had the best race of their careers. As opposed to the 5A Girls race, the leaders of the 5A Boys race went through the first mile in a relatively tame 5:01 with no gaps between runners in the field. Scudamore came through the mile in 5:02 and 16^th place. As the leaders came down the hill, Scudamore was among the group of about 11 runners who had started to move away from the rest of the field, and by the 2-mile mark, Scudamore had moved up to 8^th place; he battled back and forth for 7^th place over the third mile before closing strong up the  final hill into the stadium and through the final straight away overtaking two runners and taking 6^th place in 15:42. Meanwhile, Beardsley had established himself in the top-50 runners from the first mile (45^th, 5:08) and held on through the finish, crossing in 47^th in 16:36, just a handful of seconds off his personal best and definitively better than his 12^th place regional finish had predicted. 

More East Angel Cross Country History:

Rosie Mucharsky is the first East Angel to win a Girls Cross Country title. The only other top-7 finishes: Dana Price, 4^th place in 1979 (the second girls state meet), and Kali Steven, 5^th place in 1988. 

Only three boys have finished better than Jonas Scudamore at the Colorado State meet since 1968: Ashi Geberkidane (1^st in 2012); Cerake Geberkidane (3^rd in 2012, 1^st in 2013); and Harrison Scudamore (5^th in 2016 and 2017). From 1953-1967, a total of nine Angel boys finished in the top-7 at the State Meet. 

And looking ahead:

We will celebrate these performances, our seniors, and all of the team this Sunday at our team banquet. Please buy your tickets now! https://east-xc-banquet-tickets-2023.cheddarup.com

For athletes training for the Nike Southwest regional, we will continue to meet at our usual practice times unless otherwise posted on Coach Kohuth’s door. Workouts will also be posted on FinalSurge. (You can add your intention to go and travel details here.)

By almost all measures, the Denver East High School Angels had a successful afternoon of racing at the Colorado 5A Regional Championship over the Northwest Open Space Park course in Northglenn this past Friday.

On what was another unseasonably warm day, the Girls Championship race was the first of the afternoon. Despite having beat all the teams in the field earlier in the season, based on seasonal best times the Angels were predicted to finish third behind the teams from Boulder High School and Fairview High School. As expected, junior Rosie Mucharsky established herself at the front of the pack early. About midway through the race, Mucharsky urged her Boulder competitor and pre-race co-favorite to pick up the pace with her. With 1000m left to race, the two had established a substantial lead on the rest of the field before Mucharsky pulled away over the last 600m to easily win in a time of 18:18. Senior Grace Todd put herself inside the top-10 from early in the race and a strong finish propelled her to 8^th place in 19:24. The rest of the East Angel pack hung further back in the field in the early part of the race with the quartet of sophomores Julieta Ochoa and Scout Chomas and ninth-graders Corrine Kennedy and Avery Johnson barely in the top-40 as they approached the mile mark. There may have been a few palpitations among the coaching staff during that first half of the race, as quick calculations of the team scores indicated the Angels might have been as far back as 5^th place as a team. But by midway, it was apparent the Angel runners knew what they were doing. The pack steadily made its way up through the field; with 1000m to race, all of East’s scorers had moved inside the top-25, and it was just a question of whether East would place 2^nd or 3^rd – with any team in the top-4 moving on to the State Meet. Ochoa and Kennedy moved all the way up to 16^th and 17^th place in 20:02 and 20:04 respectively; Johnson finished 22^nd in 20:26 and Chomas 26^th in 20:38. Senior Sophia Shiroff was just another 20 seconds back in 33^rd place, closely followed by ninth-grader Lola Carhart who had a strong finish to her season, finishing in 21:01 for 34^th ; junior Lila Cypers took 45^th in 21:27. The girls from Boulder won the meet with 35 points. East totaled 64, Fairview 84, and Broomfield High School grabbed the final qualifying spot for the State Meet with 113 points. 

The Girls Team, having accomplished its primary mission of qualifying for the State Meet, got to celebrate as the East Boys raced next. The front of the Boys race unfolded much like the Girls; a large early pack thinned down to four runners by 2-miles and then just the two pre-race favorites, East junior Jonas Scudamore and Fairview High School’s top runner, with 1000m left to race. Scudamore had the better finishing kick of that pair over the last 300m, winning by 2 seconds with a time of 15:49, securing his third trip to the Colorado State Meet. Meanwhile, most of East’s attention was focused on senior Connor Beardsley who battled pole to post to be one of the top-15 individuals in the race and punch his ticket to the State Meet; it looked like it would be close with just 1000m left to race, but Beardsley closed superbly to grab 12^th place and comfortably move on to his second State Meet. Junior Ben Brown finished 42^nd in 18:04, sophomore Kyle Kojima 47^th in 18:16 (a personal best time), and ninth-grader Emery Wagner 48^th in 18:23, to close out the Angels scoring five. Junior Beckett Nelson-Gardner race to a 61^st place finish in 19:04, sophomore Abraham Morginsky 65^th in 19:10, and seniors Finn Egan and Linus Cole closed out their high school cross country careers with 72^nd and 89^th place finishes in 19:27 and 21:06 respectively. While falling short of preseason hopes of qualifying for State, the 5^th place finish and 142 points exceeded pre-race expectations for this young team that had been depleted of a number of its top runners due to injury. 

The #7 ranked Denver East Girls will race in 5A State Meet Championship at 1pm on Saturday at the Norris-Penrose Center in Colorado Springs. Scudamore and Beardsley will compete in the Boys 5A Championship at 2:20pm. 

The Angels will have a bus making the trip down to the meet, leaving at 9am from East. Students interested in making the trip to support their team should let Coach Kohuth know. 

Important Dates:

10/28: Colorado State Cross Country Meet

11/5: Denver East Cross Country Celebration Banquet and Awards (please get your ticket by Oct 30)

11/8: 2-Mile race at Niwot High School (fun for all levels; a good tune-up for going to Nike SW): https://runsignup.com/Race/CO/Longmont/2Mile4REAL

11/18: Nike SW Regionals, Mesa, Arizona (all levels of runners welcome; talk to Coach Scudamore or Coach Kohuth by October 28. If you are attending, add your information here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TMKeXkeXxPzJoBTt3jbuccx9cXFMHQDl5WxTCbPcx0w/edit?usp=sharing 

July 23-25: Mark your calendars for East Summer Training camp at Snow Mountain Ranch.