Comments on the Az-Nv Border War:

 

First of all, since we’re in the Thanksgiving season, I want to start off by thanking everybody who made this meet possible, and the list is numerous.

Thank you to Bruce Momsen, Richard Welch and all of the Boulder City people who did a great job hosting the meet.

Thank you to Jessica Scobell, who put in endless hours coordinating the list of athlete entries among other duties.

Thank you to John Dixon and NTS for promoting and scoring the meet.

Thank you to Doyle Jensen who provided us with the great photos. Do you have feeling in your fingers yet, Doyle?

Thank you to Penny Sparks who did an outstanding job coordinating things up North.

Thank you to the Jock Shop where we received the t-shirts and Nevada uniforms. They looked great.

Thank you to the Arizona people, Steve Johnson, Jeff Guy and the other coaches who helped deliver at their end.

Thank you to all of the coaches in the South who helped promote the meet and helped out on Saturday.

Thank you to all of the parents who came out and supported the kids.

For anyone else I forgot to mention, thank you!

 

Finally, thank you to the athletes who competed in the First Annual Border War. Without you, this meet is not possible. This, after all, is what the whole meet was about—the athletes. Nobody HAD to come, but most of the invitees did anyway. Despite the cold and wind, the athletes came out and competed hard. Is that not typical of the cross-country athlete?

 I realize that previous commitments, travel and expenses may have kept others from attending that wanted to. Hopefully, in the future, travel cost will not be an issue.

 

Overall, I think this meet was a success. This meet has been talked about for a couple of years. This year, the Nevada and Arizona coaches decided to “just do it!” Of course we realized that this meet would be far from perfect. However, coaches from both states agreed that we need to run the meet to get it off the ground. Now that we ran it, we have a direction for next year and some ideas on what worked and what didn’t.

 

Our vision is that someday this meet will become a full weekend event.  We would like to include guest speakers, a clinic, a social/dinner for the athletes and full sponsorship to relieve the burden of money for the athletes. We’re working already to get some of these things in place next year. We would like to rival the Washington-Oregon Border Clash someday. Currently they are the only other two states that ran this type of meet this year (Wyoming and Montana cancelled theirs this year due to weather).

 

As for the race itself, hats off to Team Arizona who dominated the meet. The Arizona kids were not only great runners, but classy athletes as well. I thought the Nevada kids were great also. Times were excellent considering the weather conditions on a course that does not lend itself to great times anyway.  We may be a notch behind, but hopefully seeing these results will motivate the Nevada kids to step up and close the gap in the future. Nevertheless, they competed hard!

 

 

Yours in Running,

William Miller

President, SNTCCA

The Border War that turned into a Dam Whipping

 

Nevada looked pathetic next to Arizona at the Border War meet last Saturday in Boulder City, especially in the girls race, but then it really shouldn’t have been too surprising considering that most of Nevada’s top runners did not complete in this event.  Nevada’s top eight girls – based on state meet times – did not race, with the exception of Lowry’s Katie Engstrom.  I do believe our best runners stack up against Arizona’s best, and in fact I believe we are better than Arizona, so Saturday’s match-up wasn’t a true comparison.

 

Reno’s Collier and Mel Lawrence probably would have easily won had they competed.  I say that since Collier ran 18:23.4 in windy conditions on the same course a year ago.  Saturday’s Border War winner, Whitney Hardt, ran a 19:03.  And if you throw in Elko’s Britney Almaguer, who ran a 19:14 last year in that horrible wind and is much improved this year, we may well have had a 1 – 3 sweep.  What was really disappointing is that we did have the third fastest runner from the state meet, Kelsey Engstrom, signed up and ready to represent Nevada but she had to pull out due to illness.  Our other top runner, Christa Avena, who had the fifth fastest time at state, also had to pull out due to illness.  Even though we had our sixth fastest in Katie Engstrom, she was competing sick, and it didn’t stop there for Nevada as our 10^th runner from state Kelly Fernandez also pulled out due to a soccer injury.  As a team we could not get our top girls together and it showed.  We only had two top ten runners from state in the race, Katie Engstrom and Amanda Gramly, and Amanda was our only runner that broke into the top ten, finishing ninth, which is distressing considering Arizona had 12 girls on the starting line and Nevada had 23.  Nevada was simply unable to make the competition worthwhile for the Arizona girls. But one race is not an indication of our talent.  I know Arizona did not bring all of their top runners, but they did bring a lot more than we did, and they had large school state champions standing on the line, we did not.

 

Nevada boys were represented by three of the state’s best in Patrick Swick, Blake Schlotzhauser and Stephen Pottey, and they proved that they can compete with Arizona’s best and did with all three of them shattering the course record and the winning state time from last year.  Nevada had three boys in the top five, but after that we really fell off and Arizona trounced our Nevada team.  Had we two or three more of our top eight runners from the state meet, I know they would have handed Arizona a loss.

 

Missing most of our top runners from our first Border War made Nevada look less than “Nevada good,” but I believe that the race was a success in many ways.  First and foremost, the southern Nevada coaches put on one heck of a meet – from the race to the tee shirts, and they deserve our thanks for their hard work and effort.  Their commitment to Nevada athletes is to be commended.  More commitment and involvement from the northern Nevada coaches would have made the event better. 

 

I believe making and having traditions fosters success for the long run.  It may take a few years for it to blossom, and I believe we will draw our best to this race in the future.  I also believe that in the future our athletes will not settle for less than their best when they know they are going to face the best.  At least I hope we have some element of pride in our performance and will never let this butt-whipping by Arizona take place again.

 

I am much honored I was able to take a small part in this ground-breaking tradition.  I see a bright future for this race if all will unite and get involved.  It has the potential to not only become as successful as the Oregon-Washington Border Clash, but it can be a valuable tool in promoting our sport for future generations and motivating excellence in our current runners.

 

Congratulations to all of the athletes that participated in our first annual Border War – you were a part of history in the making.  I hope this motivates you all to step up for next year when we travel to Arizona.

 

Penny Sparks

 Course Map