COLORADO SPRINGS — No one should ever question Jacob Benson.
Benson, who proudly wears the Platte Canyon uniform, attends South Park High School and does a majority of his training on his own in the hills of Fairplay. Two times a week this season, he made the 40 minute drive down Highway 85 to run with his teammates in Bailey and on Saturday he was rewarded for his effort.
Benson became the first individual state champion for Platte Canyon, but you can rest assured he still bleeds Burros green and gold.
“It is an amazing feeling and there are really no words to describe it,” said Benson, who crossed the finish line four second ahead of Salida’s Taylor Stack in 16 minutes, 46 seconds. “I just go at a pace that feels comfortable and that I know I can hold for a long time and then towards the end give it everything I’ve got.”
Platte Canyon coach Troy Phillips bolted out of the stand and down to the stadium floor to congratulate his state champ.
“We couldn’t be more thrilled to have him and we are just overjoyed for him,” Phillips said. “He has run with a lot of adversity because he has to train by himself a lot of the times. This has been building since his sophomore year when he finished 12th and then second last year. We were gunning for a state championship all season long.”
Staying with the day of firsts theme on the boys side: It was the first team championship for Frontier Academy. The Wolverines placed all four scoring runners in the top 17 to finish with a score of 44 points and edge second place Lamar (55).
Leading the way for the Frontier foursome was senior Chris Baker, who finished fifth in 17:16.9. Drake Bytnar, Sean Tyrrell and Brody Lewis all ran well for coach Brett Shanklin, whose team went 1-2-3-4 last week at regionals and carried a load of momentum into state.
“We’ve done a lot of thing over the last four years to get to this point,” Shanklin said. “Finally they just put it together. They jut continued to get stronger and we always train with that goal in mind and continue to work for that. It has paid dividends and as the season went on they got stronger and stronger.”
On the girls side, Bayfield’s Eva Lou Edwards repeated as champion and in the process took 24 seconds off of her time from a year ago. She blistered the Norris Penrose Events Center course in 18 minutes, 41.6 second and was 1:26 faster than runner-up Makayla Santos of Frontier Academy.
Not bad for a girl who was admittedly burned out.
“It doesn’t feel different, just because I didn’t have a lot of excitement coming into today. I was most excited to be here with my team, just because last year I had to do it by myself,” said Edwards, who has also qualified for the Class 5A state tennis tournament for Durango, runs track and plays basketball.
“I’m a little burned out right now, because I usually play tennis in the spring, but I ran track instead. So I’ve been running and running and running, so I’m going to play basketball and then see if my love for running comes back. Hopefully it does.”
Salida’s girls put on an impressive show in the team race with tiny team total of 35 points, easily distancing itself from second place Estes Park (94).
The Spartans had all six of their runners in the top 32, and all four scoring runners were in the top 18. leading the way for Salida was the sophomore duo of Sydney Fesermeyer (3rd in 20:16.8) and Phoebe Powell (6th in 20:34.1).
