Celebrating Title IX: Local timeline of superstars and state champions (1981 – 2022)

The last 40 years have been marked by female skiing legends Lindsey Vonn and Mikaela Shiffrin and local state champions on the course and the court.

1999: The Battle Mountain girls cross-country team places third at the 3A state meet. Two years later, Rob Parish, a science teacher at Berry Creek Middle School, hopped on the staff and started rebuilding with Kelli Witter and Ashley Weaver. By the fall of 2004, the team had grown from seven kids to 57.

“Kids want to be around him. He inspires them. He makes it fun. He works with all levels of kids. He’s not only increased the numbers. He’s also taken the cross country program to its finest competitive performance in the history of the program,” said Battle Mountain athletics director Fred Koetteritz in Chris Freud’s 2005 piece on Parish receiving a national coach of the year honor. Parish’s program at Battle Mountain would produce state champions, NCAA All-Americans, and Olympic qualifiers in the next two decades.

2004: On Friday, December 3, SSCV alumna Lindsey Kildow won her first World Cup in the Lake Louise (Alberta) downhill.

“I was pretty nervous today,” Kildow told the Vail Daily’s Shauna Farnell that evening.

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“I didn’t really know how it was going to end up. I was hoping for a top-three. My main goal today was to relax and to ski the way I was training all summer.”

Her name would change to Lindsey Vonn and she would go on to win 81 more World Cups after that day.

2006: Chris Freud reported that the Huskies “complete a dream season” with their first ever state volleyball title after defeating Mountain View 25-20, 25-21, 25-18. In one of the most amazing displays of team dominance from any group — boys or girls — in the valley’s history, the Huskies were 30-0 against 4A competition (and an amazing 90-0 in games against 4A opponents), with the only blemish on their 30-1 season record coming to Doherty, ranked No. 8 in 5A. The 2006 title was sweet vindication after a state semifinal loss in 2005.

2014: Eighteen-year-old Mikaela Shiffrin of EagleVail became the first female America slalom gold medalist since 1972 at with her win at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.

“Two of Shiffrin’s biggest focuses in skiing are having fun and learning. She credited Ski and Snowboard Club Vail coaches Simon Marsh and Rika Moore as being key to both those things,” wrote Edward Stoner of the Vail Daily.

2015: Vail Mountain School cruised to the girls’ 2A state soccer title. Freud wrote this about another budding Vail Valley female superstar: “OK, that Tess Johnson girl is pretty good. If the skiing thing doesn’t work out, she could be a decent soccer player. She got the goals, but they were the result of great buildup.” Johnson would go on to compete in the 2018 Olympics in the moguls.

2019: In reminiscing on the 2018-2019 season, the longtime Vail Daily sports reporter accurately reported that “the ladies ruled the roost.” Claire Krueger led Battle Mountain to its first league title since 1993 and was the Co-Western Slope Player of the Year in soccer. Meanwhile, Naomi and Lizzy Harding dominated in cross-country, Nordic skiing and track.

Vail Mountain School volleyball made the state tournament for the first time since 2005, its soccer team made the state quarterfinals and golf qualified for the state championship as well.

Then Joslin Blair won the state 1600-meters and the Battle Mountain girls 4×800-meter relay team three-peated as state champions.

2022: Fifty years after Title IX became law, and 56 years after that 1966 girls team “would have surely won the state ski title, had there been a competition,” Lindsey Whitton wins state skimeister title and helped the Battle Mountain girls secure the team title as well.