Eagle Valley claims five podiums and lowers a school record at 4A state track and field meet

Eagle Valley came away from the 2025 state track and field meet with five podiums and another program best.

Dylan Blair opened the meet Thursday morning with a scintillating 3200-meter run, placing seventh in a time of 9 minutes, 11.08 seconds — 12 seconds clear of the in-state school record he established at the Western Slope Championships two weeks prior.

“It just feels great,” the junior said of his state meet debut. “Over the past years I’ve been sick or injured before state and it just hasn’t played out well. Just being in the environment made me really excited. No matter where you are on the track everybody is screaming at you to run faster.”

Even though Blair’s seed time was over 20 seconds off that of favorite Brogan Collins, the Devil knew if he put everything together, he had a shot at a medal.

“I was just thinking I got to attach myself to the pack and just let them take me out as hard as I can and try to stick with it as long as possible,” he said.

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State cross-country champion Aiden Le Roux strung out the 18-runner field quickly with a bold, 65-second first lap. Blair was in the back of the single-file lead group initially, but moved up to the top-3 by the end of the third lap. Coming through the halfway in 4:34, Blair looked poised and well-positioned.

“Running just felt so good,” he said. “The pace was going great, the legs were feeling great.”

While Le Roux performed the lion’s share of the work in leading through 2400 meters, Hunter Robbie made a hard move with two laps to go. His Niwot teammate, Ryder Keeton, joined in and Collins hopped on the train to make it a three-person battle. Blair said at that point, he was already at max capacity and couldn’t cover the accelerations even if he’d wanted to. Keeton closed in a 60-second quarter to claim the win in 9:02.43 as Collins and Robbie rounded out the top-3. Keeton’s time just missed the all-classifications state meet record set last year by Battle Mountain alumnus Will Brunner (9:01.22).

Eagle Valley set six school records during the 2025 season. Unfortunately, the stars didn’t all align for the Devils at state. The third-ranked 4×200 team was disqualified in the finals and the fifth-seeded 4×100-meter team was ousted in the prelims. The 4×400 team also did not make finals. Kingston Clous’ eighth in the 100 was a bright spot for the sprint-heavy squad, as was Tiago Horruitiner’s third in the high jump. The sophomore came into the event ranked 13th, but jumped 6-03 to take bronze. On the girls side, Allie Braun finished eighth in the high jump and Lily Brueck ran a personal best time of 45.89 in the 300-hurdle prelims to advance to the finals, where she also finished eighth.

Battle Mountain sent three athletes to Jeffco Stadium for the three-day weekend. Lilly Beaumont ran 12.68 in the 100-meter dash prelim to take 14th and Jakob Methvin ran 50.51 to place 10th in the 400 prelims, missing finals qualification by just 0.02 seconds. Tyler Heimerl placed ninth in the long jump (16-03.25) on Thursday and did not post a height in the high jump final on Friday.

The season is not quite over for a few Eagle Valley athletes. The Devils are sending a healthy contingent to Eugene, Oregon from June 19-22 for Nike Outdoor Nationals. A week prior, Dylan Blair and his brother, Tyler, will head to Slovakia to represent Team USA at the 18th International U18 Mountain Running Cup on June 14. To prepare for both the 5.8-kilometer, 1,680-foot uphill only climb and the 3200-meters at Hayward Field, Blair said he’s going to stick with working on his track speed in the coming weeks. In 2024, he won the bronze medal at the same event in Spain.

“Last year I think I really thrived on the uphill, (but) we just got out a little slow,” said Blair, who wants to carry on the family tradition at international trail events — his older sister Joslin won gold at the same event in 2018. “I definitely want to try and do what she did.”