The end-of-season celebration will be on Friday, November 15 at 6:00 pm at the Montview Presbyterian Church in Park Hill. 1980 Dahlia St, Denver, CO 80220
Join us for dinner, awards, and a celebratory end-of-season party.
Runners and their families and fans are invited. Each person who attends, inlcuding athletes, needs a ticket.
(You can also contribute to coaches gifts at the ticket purchase link)
Please buy your tickets no later than Nov 10. If cost feels like a barrier to coming, please see Coach Kohuth or text or email Jennifer (303-725-7900 or jareich424@gmail.com). We have scholarships available to make sure everyone can attend.
The drive to the 5A Region 4 Championship was a bit of an adventure, as the charter bus got pummeled by such high winds the driver felt the need to slow substantially and drive with the hazard lights blinking as he navigated the team through a dust storm on I-25. Conditions were modestly better when the Angels arrived at Spring Canyon Park in Fort Collins, though winds of 25-35mph were going to insinuate themselves into the racing as well as the drive. Maybe some predictably unpredictable Colorado autumn weather was just what the Angels needed to fly further into championship season.
It takes a top-4 finish to qualify for the Colorado State Meet Championship – as a percentage of teams qualifying, no sport in the state is stingier in qualifying for State Championship competition.
Based on seasonal best times, the Angel boys looked like the 5th best team in the region – about 30 points behind the supposed 3rd and 4th best teams in the region. None-the-less, the general feeling from the team and coaches was that the Angels had a solid chance of moving on to the State Meet. Due to injury, illness, and some coaching decisions, the fastest five of the Angel boys had only raced together once all season – at the league meet, where the Angels had run a deceptively strong race, so optimism was not unfounded. The Angels were already counting on their senior ace, Jonas Scudamore, to win the meet, so to reduce the team score by 30 points, the 2nd through 5th runners on the team each needed to finish an estimated seven places better than projected for the Angels to advance to State. The Angels runners did all that and a lot more to barrel their way through the proverbial door and into the State Meet. Up front Scudamore ran in the lead pack without taking the lead until about 1200m left to race. While the other top runners didn’t make it easy, he was able to secure his second Regional championship over the final 500m in a course record time of 15:45. The rest of the team made steady work of moving up from their early race positions to finish 9-15 places better than expected. Over the first mile, junior Henry Bennett was running near 15th place, moved up to 11th by the 2-mile mark, and eventually finished an impressive 7th place in 16:22. Junior Isaiah Springer and senior Ben Brown positioned themselves around 25th place going through the mile; the pair moved into near 20th place by the 2-mile mark. Brown then held on for 20th in 16:55,while Springer had a deadly finish, moving all the way up to 14th in 16:42. Sophomore Emery Wagner was probably as far back as 40th in the early going; he steadily moved up to eventually take 25th in 17:10. Those five Angels totaled 67 points – 50 points fewer than projected and 41 points fewer than needed to punch a ticket to State Meet with a 3rd place finish. Colorado 5A #9 ranked Fort Collins won the team title, followed by Rocky Mountain High School with an identical total to East, prevailing on the 6th runner rule. Colorado 5A #10 ranked Fossil Ridge was a point back of East, taking the 4th and final spot for State Meet, ahead of Erie High School with 108 points. Speaking of 6th runners (the sentence before last), East’s 6th through 9th runners were asked to race more aggressively than they are accustomed, as they were to be the team’s insurance should something happen to one of the first five (did anyone else see Emery stumble and then recover with 120m to go?). It turned out that the Angels were in good hands had something unfortunate happened up front. Junior Jackson Gertge finished 49th in 18:11(a personal best!) and junior Abraham Morginsky 50th in 18:14; had any runner other than Scudamore dropped out, East would still have qualified for State with Gertge or Morginsky’s finishes. Had any runners other than Bennett or Scudamore dropped out of the scoring five, Kyle Kojima (54th, 18:25) and Mason Harper (55th, 18:28) would have provided enough scoring support for the Angels to have qualified for State. It is impossible to remember a time when East has had a Boys Team race when all nine runners had really, really good days.
There was a little less drama (but for the persistence of crazy wind) in the Girls race – at least for the Angels who had already shown throughout the season that this team was more or less guaranteed to advance to State. In this context, the coaches had asked the girls to practice getting off the starting line a little more aggressively than has been their custom, since there really will be no choice but to be a bit more aggressive from the gun to achieve the team’s goals at State. It looked like many of the girls did indeed get off the line a bit more aggressively and still managed to move up positions throughout the latter miles of the race.
Up front, senior Rosie Mucharsky gave up at least 8 seconds to the NXN/Footlocker Nationals qualifier from Riverdale Ridge over the first mile of the race, closed that gap to 5 or 6 seconds by 2 miles, and then waited until a final furious 200m kick to make up the rest – coming a fraction of a second short to take second place with a time of 17:31; since this was just a rehearsal for State, good lessons were learned. Both runners were substantially under the old course record. Meanwhile, sophomore Corrine Kennedy ran her way into the top-15, running 19:13 for 13th place. Julieta Ochoa and Avery Johnson moved through at least a half dozen girls after the first mile, working their way up to finish in the top-20 with finishes of 16th and 17th place in 19:48 and 19:52 respectively. Junior Scout Chomas was 19th in 19:58, having also moved her way up into the top-20 in the second mile of the race. Together those five totaled 67 points, which was fewer than projected, and took second place behind Fossil Ridge High School who are currently ranked #16 in the nation.
The Girls Team display of depth was even more emphatic than the boys – in fact, any combination for the nine East Angel finishers would have produced a score low enough to have qualified for the State Meet. Sophomore Lola Carhart trailed Chomas by just 4 seconds in 20:02 for 22nd, ninth-grader Lila Brown ran a personal best 20:18 for 25th place, junior Mary Clare Nussbaum was 27th in 20:23, and ninth-grader Paola Ochoa finished in 21:06 for 37th. All of the girls but for Mucharsky had run this course at the beginning of the season, and while the conditions were not identical, the girls posted improvements of anywhere from 50 seconds to 3 minutes on the same course since the beginning of the season.
The East Angel Girls and Boys will conclude the Colorado High School Cross Country season on Saturday, November 2nd, at the Norris Penrose Event Center. The 5A Girls State Championship race is at 12:20pm and the Boys at 1:40pm – more information will follow on the website. We are also happy to report that our DPS friends at Northfield qualified both their boys and girls teams for State, and Denver South qualified their boys. We are near certain this is a new record for DPS schools qualifying at the 5A level in the current championship format. Our league is strong.
All athletes who are not still competing (or are alternates to compete at State) need to return their uniforms on Friday October 25th (tomorrow)! Please drop off your uniform (clean or dirty) between 3:30pm and 4:30pm at the entrance to the track (facing East HS). Failure to return uniforms will result in a $100 charge. Thanks
State Meet Qualifier Bags
Congratulations East Boys and Girls for qualifying for State Championship! If you have a State Meet bag, bring it tomorrow to practice at 4:00pm, so it can be embroidered for 2024!
The Denver East Angels hosted the City League Championships on Wednesday at Denver City Park, and in all four races over the challenging course the Angels exceeded expectations.
back to back league titles
Based on performances from earlier in the season, the Angels were underdogs for the team titles in three of four team races and two of four individual races. East came away from the meet with two team titles and three individual titles, and in all four races East scored fewer points than would have been predicted by earlier performance – a great indication of how well nearly every Angel showed up for Championship Season.
Seniors
In the Boys JV race, Northfield High School was heavily favored and backed that up with a perfect 15-point score. But the East JV Boys got after it from the start and made the team from “Central Park” earn it. Juniors Jackson Gertge and Kyle Kojima gave no quarter in the first mile, and the two held on for 7th and 8th place in 18:35 and 18:38 respectively. Junior Mason Harper finished 11th in 19:00 and freshman Tre Even was 14th in 19:09, less than half a second back from the top freshman in the race. That gave the Angels four runners in the top-14, which was substantially better than anticipated. Sophomore Zach Smiles closed out the scoring for the Angels with his 26th place finish in 19:43, securing 2nd place for the Angels, one place better than 2023. Freshman Finley Knight was the next finisher for the Angels in 43rd, the 9th freshman overall in 20:56, junior Alexandros Mays was 45th, and freshman Weston Dodson (10th best freshman in the race) was 47th.
Nobody can remember the last time the East Angels JV Girls didn’t win the City League team title. Because it has never happened. Ever. That was the challenge given to the East JV Girls as they faced a Northfield team that was favored to beat the Angels 23-30 if seasonal best times were to be believed. From early in the first mile, Angel runner Ivy Parish set the pace up front, and while a single Northfield runner gamely hung on to try to make a race of it, Parish eventually pulled away for a comfortable 17 second margin of victory in 20:42. Angel junior Mary Clare Nussbaum, somewhat typically for her, made the biggest moves up through the top-10 finishers to secure 3rd place in 21:08. Ninth-graders Paola Ochoa and Ainslie Mohr also moved their way past Northfield runners in the middle mile and hung on for 5th and 6th place in 21:32 and 21:34. The Nighthawk girls would put the next eight runners across the line, but only the first five of them would count towards the team score, so when ninth grader Emma Maldonado-Ramos crossed the line in 22:54 in 15th place, she was scored as 12th place and the East Angels had secured another JV Girls team title, upsetting the Nighthawks 27-30. Sophomore Grey Jenson crossed the line in 23:57 for 26th place for the Angels as their 6th runner, and seniors Rae Tatel and Yelena Konowal ran 24:01 and 24:47 for 29th and 34th place.
The Northfield Boys Cross Country Team has earned the #5 ranking in Colorado 5A this season and came to the league meet not only heavily favored, but on paper looked like they could score as few as 20 points. However, recent history in the meet suggested that the East and South boys at least had a chance to make the race more competitive, and indeed, the race for the team title ended up being far more competitive. The first half of the race developed somewhat tactically, as a large group of boys including East senior Jonas Scudamore and junior Henry Bennet came through 2500m as a pack, with junior Isaiah Springer and senior Ben Brown not far behind. The race broke open between 3000m and 4000m, as the defending champion Scudamore steadily pulled away from the rest of the leaders to secure his second league title in 16:09. Bennett was able to grab 5th place in 16:35 from that lead group, while Springer moved up to 10th in 16:44 and Brown held on to 15th in 17:05. Sophomore Emery Wagner, running his first race in more than three weeks coming off a potluck related injury, ran a great 2nd half to take 21st in 17:24. Junior Abraham Morginsky finished 32nd in 18:23 and senior Toby Penner 39th in 19:02. As was the case last year, the Angels took third as a team, but this year the Angeles were far more competitive than anticipated and than they had been the year before, finishing with 51 points to Northfield’s 38 and South’s 44.
Times run at the Liberty Bell Invitational in mid-September indicated that the East Angel Girls Varsity (who unexplainably are no longer ranked in the top-10 in the State) were favored by just a single point over the Northfield Nighthawks. While the Nighthawks definitely field a really good team, the East coaches suspected that the Angels had made some favorable progress in the last month, and the results bore that out. Way, way out front, senior Rosie Mucharsky took a couple very swift victory laps on her own from the start to secure her 4th league title. Because Parks and Recreation has forced changes to the East home course, there are no previous meet records, but 17:40 on this challenging course is definitely really fast. Delivering arguably the biggest surprise of the meet, sophomore Corrine Kennedy confidently moved past one of the best runners in the league over the last few years near the end of the second mile to take second place in 19:15. Juniors Julieta Ochoa and Scout Chomas executed the race plan excellently to take 4th and 6th for the Angels in 19:43 and 20:02. Sophomore Lola Carhart rose to the challenge of getting past all other teams’ 5th best runner, racing into 9th place overall in 20:09, while her classmate Avery Johnson, coming off injury and a more than three week break from racing, ran tough in the second half of the race to take 11th in 20:16. Ninth grader Lila Brown, who was asked pre-race to stick with her “faster” teammates in the earlier part of the race even if it meant she would “blow-up” before the finish, did the former and not the latter, running a personal best on a course that does give these up easily, finishing in 20:18 for 13th place. It was an emphatic win for the Angels, scoring a mere 22 points, half as many as the next team, and with all seven runners finishing with 1st or 2nd Team All-City honors.
The East Angel Varsity teams will take this momentum into the 5A Region 4 Championships on Thursday at Spring Canyon Park in Fort Collins. The top-4 teams and top-15 individuals will move on the Colorado State Meet. The Boys race at 2pm and the Girls at 2:30pm. Find meet information including course map here.
Girls: Mucharsky, Kennedy, J. Ochoa, Chomas, Carhart, Johnson, Brown, Nussbaum, P. Ochoa
Unofficial bus information: Leaving at 12pm. Alternates training with the team and other team members in good academic standing can get excused from school to attend meet and take bus, space allowing, per Coach Kohuth’s discretion, to support the team. Official bus information will be announced at practice or speak with Coach Kohuth.
Regional Team dinner on Wednesday for those competing and all alternates continuing to train with the team – check with coaches for details.
Come in your full race uniform (top and bottoms) to City Park for photos at 4pm. You may do individual photos tomorrow too. Ordering information will be here as it becomes available.
Amazing job today at City League Championships! All four teams exceeded expectations and East came away with 2 team league titles and 3 individual league titles. Much more about all the teams will be posted in the recap later in the week. Congratulations to everyone who competed, and huge thanks to all our volunteers who spent a full afternoon on the course making this event possible. We always receive a lot of praise from DPS athletic department officials when we host meets, and this is only possible due to the generosity of so many parents and other supporters of our program. Thank-you!
About this time of year, we check-out what our East Angel alumni who are running at the collegiate level have been doing so far this season.
Starting in the northeast, Julia Schor, East Class of ’21 and now a senior at Amherst College, has had a terrific season thus far for the Mammoth. Most recently Schor took 24th of nearly 400 runners at the Paul Short Invitational in Lehigh, Pennsylvania, helping her team take first of 46 teams. She has run 22:01 for 6K this fall, and the undefeated Mammoth are currently ranked #5 in the entire nation in DIII.
If you are looking for Alligators in Pennsylvania, apparently you head to Allegheny College. Recent East grad and now Allegheny Gator Sophia Shiroff was most recently 68th of about 180 runners at the Ohio Wesleyan Invitational running 24:55 for 6K. The Gators took second in the meet and are currently ranked 7th in the Great Lakes Region for DIII.
Moving midwest, Grace Todd opened her collegiate career last week racing in the Open Division of the Pre-Nationals race in Terre Haute, Indiana. The Washington University Bear ran 24:13 for 6K to take 20th place. The Bears are currently ranked #14 in the country for NCAA DIII.
Also in Terre Haute last weekend was Lewis and Clark College sophomore Quinn Higgins. Higgins was 100th of over 300 runners in the Championship race in 26:08, where the Pioneers took 18th of 46 teams. Higgins posted a pr of 25:29 for 8K earlier in the season. The Pioneers are ranked 9th in the West Region of DIII.
In NCAA Division I action, Corbin Hobert, now a sophomore at UC San Diego, ran his first collegiate cross country races this year. He has put up an 8K best of 26:32 this season for the Tritons.
Dartmouth College graduate Will Daley is now a graduate transfer at #21 ranked University of Virginia; he has yet to race this season for the Cavaliers.
We need course monitors and other volunteers to make certain we have a safe and successful event on our City Park course. Please sign-up to volunteer here: City Meet Volunteers.
Girls: Mucharsky, Kennedy, J Ochoa, Johnson, Chomas, Carhart, Brown
All other athletes will race JV. This is our most important and last JV race of the season – we expect everyone to compete on our home course!
Celebration Dinner and Fund Raiser at Atomic Cowboy following the meet.
Regionals are on October 24. We race nine at regionals and expect additional alternates to continue to train with the team through regionals. In addition to our league varsity teams, the following boys- Kojima, Gertge, M.Harper, Gallantz, Mays, Z. Smiles, Even, and girls – Nussbaum, P. Ochoa, Mohr, E. Maldonado-Ramos, Jenson should plan to continue to train with the team.
Athletes wanting to workout with teammates on Monday, October 14, can meet with Coach Brimeyer and Coach Scudamore at 4pm at City Park. Attendance is optional (but completing the workout is not!).
Denver East Cross Country will again send athletes to the NXR SW Championship in Mesa, Arizona on November 23. The races will be at the Toka Sticks Golf Club – reportedly an even faster course than the last three years. Information on the race is here: NXR SW.
Coach Kohuth will enter athletes who express interest in the attending. East Boys will run one of the Large School races. East Girls are likely to qualify for the Championship race. Athletes are responsible for organizing their own transportation and accommodations, though we try to coordinate travel plans. Some coaches and parents of athletes will be renting cars and will be able to help provide transportation on Friday to inspect the course and for a team dinner, and on Saturday to the meet and back to hotels for athletes staying in the same hotels or nearby. Please email Coach Kohuth and Coach Scudamore if you are interested in competing. This is traditionally a fun way to extend the season and run on an all grass course at low altitude against athletes from Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and Colorado.
Approximate Itinerary
Thursday or early Friday fly to Phoenix. Friday 4pm – 5pm Course Walk Through at Toka Sticks Golf Club (leave hotels at 3:15pm). Friday 6:30pm Team Dinner (site tbd). Saturday 8:20am – 11:20am NXR SW XC Meet. Saturday 1:00pm Team Lunch.
Hotels: There are multiple hotel options off Hwy 60 in Mesa/Gilbert, about a 15 minute drive north from the course. There are also a couple hotels near the Phoenix/Mesa Gateway Regional Airport (not the actual Phoenix Airport) that are very close to the course.
Please share your travel plans
Please share your travel plans with coaches and teammates so we can select the same hotels or hotels in close proximity to each other. Reference and update this document so we know our teammates plans and can coordinate our itineraries in Arizona: East XC NXR Travel Plans.
Questions? Please email Coach Kohuth (steven_kohuth@dpsk12.net) or Coach Scudamore (ddscudamore@gmail.com) with questions.
Quick reminders: Practice on Monday, October 7 is at 1pm; on Tuesday at 1pm or 4pm (athlete choice). Chipotle Fund Raiser on Tuesday from 4p-8p.
Denver East High XC 