Only 14 Durango High School athletes traveled to the Coronado Cougar Classic on Saturday in Colorado Springs.
The Demons made up for it with quality, finishing fifth out of 30 teams on the girls side with 47.5 points and 20th on the boys side with 14.5 points.
Niwot and Palmer Ridge won the girls and boys meets with 70 and 59 points, respectively.
DHS freshman Alli Davis broke the school record in the girls 400-meter dash, finishing in 58.88 seconds.
Durango’s Hannah Peterson took second in the girls 3,200-meter run in 12:02.44 behind Bayfield’s Eva-Lou Edwards, who won in 11:20.61.
Edwards, the undefeated Class 3A cross country champion, finished fourth in the girls 1,600-meter run, her first non-first-place finish in any high school running race her senior season.
Durango’s 4x400-meter relay team took second to Thompson Valley in 4:04.8. Thompson Valley finished in 4:02.53.
“(Maloney) got outkicked by one of the better quarter-milers in the state,” DHS head coach David McMillan said.
That Demons’ relay team did qualify for state, as did the DHS girls 4x800-meter relay team, which finished second behind Air Academy. The Demons ran the race in 10:08.9, while Air Academy finished in 9:45.27.
Gabi Razma came in sixth in the girls long jump at 16-4.75, while Miranda Gallegos took eighth at 15-10 for the Demons.
Razma also finished third in the girls triple jump at 35-03.
Davis finished sixth in the girls high jump at 4-10.
David Moening came in sixth in the boys 400-meter run in 51.91 seconds for DHS.
Joe Crawford took 10th in the boys 1,600-meter run with a personal-best 4:37.12 for DHS.
“He’s running really well,” McMillan said of Crawford.
Benjamin Lachelt finished sixth in the boys 3,200-meter run at 10:22.15, while Nicholas Turco was eighth at 10:23.72 for the Demons.
The Demons’ boys 4x800-meter relay team took second behind Palmer Ridge by a hair. DHS finished in 8:15.86, while Palmer Ridge was at 8:15.54.
“It was great,” McMillan said. “I’m pretty hard on myself in terms of looking at where we are and why we aren’t hitting exactly what we want. It was a really good, compact meet for us.”
The Demons will split their squad again next weekend; some will attend the Tiger Invitational on Friday and Saturday in Grand Junction, while the rest will go to either a meet at Pueblo County High School on Friday or the Terry Allen Invitational in Pagosa Springs on Saturday.
“We have our sights set on the prize, and we’ll be smart coming home,” McMillan said.
heraldsports@durangoherald.com
