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Cusick has bulletin board material

Bayfield senior aiming for college school records

There’s a board in the Western State indoor track facility with the program’s records tacked on it.

Bayfield High School senior Jessica Cusick wants her name on that board sometime in the next four years.

She signed a National Letter of Intent to compete for the Mountaineers in track and field with the explicit goal of setting school records in the 400- and 800-meter runs.

“My goal is to beat those two records so that my name will be up on that board,” said Cusick, daughter of Matt and Michelle Cusick. “I think they are going to help me to run that fast.”

Cusick already holds the BHS record for both events.

She set them last season, breaking Ashley Hahn’s 14-year-old record in the 400 and Tina Prior’s 30-year-old mark in the 800.

Her junior season culminated in two top-10 finishes at the state meet.

Cusick finished ninth in the 400 and third in the 800.

Western State coaches contacted her shortly after the state meet at the beginning of the summer, and Cusick filled out an athletic questionnaire.

Within an hour, Western State’s coaches had contacted her and asked her to come to Gunnison for a visit.

“I realized they have a nice campus, and it was really pretty,” Cusick said. “Their indoor track is one of the greatest tracks I’ve ever seen.”

Western State regularly fields one of the top running programs in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference.

Its cross country team finished 16th at the 2014 national championships, and its track team was eighth at the indoor national championships and 13th at the outdoor last season.

Staying in the RMAC wasn’t huge for Cusick, but staying in Colorado was.

Most of her family resides in the Centennial State, and her brother, John Cusick, runs for Mesa State.

“It’s actually going to be fun that, for a little while, I’ll be going to the same meets he’ll be at,” Cusick said.

Cusick’s high school cross country career is over, but she still has one season of track and field left before leaving for college.

“My workouts have gone up in intensity over the past few years when I was running as a freshman,” she said. “I think that’s going to prepare me for the more intense workouts in college.”

kgrabowski@durangoherald.com



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