Battle Mountain girls shock the state at 4A cross-country championship

The Husky harriers began the season unranked. On Saturday, they ended it on the podium.

Battle Mountain placed second in the 4A girls state cross-country meet at Norris Penrose Event Center, finishing just 18 points behind Timnath and eight ahead of Summit — which defeated the Huskies at the Region 1 championship a week ago and entered the meet No. 1.

“At the beginning of the season, we didn’t really know what we were capable of as a team,” said Ruthie Demino, who noted most girls on the team slashed more than two minutes off their course time from the Cheyenne Mountain Stampede in August.

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After sneaking into the top 10 for the first time on Oct. 11, the Huskies came into state as the fourth seed. But Battle Mountain — which has now placed first or second at state nine times in the last 10 years — doesn’t go to state to get fourth. Demino reminded her teammates of the program’s rich competitive history the night before.

“I pretty much told them that we’re not coming to get our seeded place,” the junior said. “We’re coming to try to win.”

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Summit’s Ella Hagen took the race out in 5:21.1. Only Cloe Ruth of Silver Creek could stay within arms reach as Timnath’s first runner was 11 seconds back and Eden Demino registered Battle Mountain’s first split in 14th at 5:51.5. The freshman wisely opted for a more conservative approach than the regional meet.

“I knew I went out too fast (there),” she said. “I was just trying to pace myself a little bit more and really go fast on the hills and just relax and be consistent on the flats.”

One-third of the way through, the Huskies had four in the top-25 and sat in second while the Tigers — whose No. 2 runner, Avery Eytel, was in 34th — hovered in fifth. While Battle Mountain maintained its edge on the hilly second mile, their rivals nearly came back over the course of the third. Hagen — who will continue her career at CU next fall — claimed her second state cross-country championship in an astonishing time of 17 minutes, 30.7 seconds, 48 seconds clear of the runner-up, Ruth. The team race played out behind her, however, as first-year runners Caroline Provencher and Isla Elton came up big for the black and gold.

 “I just wanted to put it all out there and hopefully get a better time than the pre-state race,” said Elton, whose 19:46.4 shattered her Aug. 23 performance of 24:15.8.

“I feel like this race proved the growth I’ve had over this season,” added Provencher, who was 19th overall, four places and 10 seconds in front of Elton. “It’s really cool to see the difference from the beginning.”

With only two athletes possessing state-meet experience, the rookie runners were relatively clueless as to where they thought they could end up. Eden Demino would have been happy with a top-20 finish while Provencher was targeting the top-50. Head coach Rob Parish didn’t mess with their expectations too much beforehand, either.

“They have to believe in what they’re going to do,” he said. “They were in the ball park and I figured the competitiveness of the situation would win out.”

The naivety helped a little, too.

“Yeah I guess,” Eden Demino agreed before adding that most of the underclassmen weren’t paying enough attention to pre-race rankings to have a chip on their shoulder anyway. “It all just felt normal to us, honestly.”

Parish said the entire girls team has been coachable all year and made meaningful pacing adjustments between regionals and state. They also bought into a scoring vision concerned more about the place gap — not the time differential — between Hagen and their first girl. Finally, they simply figured out how to race.

“They did empty the tank,” Parish said. “That’s another learned skill.”

“Getting this result is an incredible feeling,” Provencher stated. “It’s really exciting to start this sport and have so much improvement.”

“It’s just really fun to do it with all these new friends,” added Elton.

Parish said the coaching staff knew the team had a top finish inside them all along — even if the pollsters didn’t.

“They just had to learn the game enough and learn to train and race so that by the end they’d be able to hit their ceiling,” he said.

“And I think they did.”