Golden View Classical Academy, Heritage Christian win 2A state cross country

COLORADO SPRINGS – Saturday was a big day for the Golden View Classical Academy cross country program.

During the CHSAA cross country state championships at Norris Penrose Event Center, the Sentinels runners teamed up to win the Class 2A state championship with a combined score of 42 points. It was a fantastic collaborative effort that included a pair of top-five individual finishes and landed the program its first-ever team title.

“It’s utterly amazing,” Sentinels junior Bobby Kiesewetter said. “We had two kind of rough state seasons where we had guys who were sick and we were struggling with injury. This year, we all just knew what we needed to do, we stayed healthy, we all focused on our individual race, negative-splitting and we just put it all out there on the field.”

Kiesewetter spearheaded the team victory by placing third with a time of 16 minutes, 24.1 seconds. He crossed the finish line just 0.3 seconds behind runner-up Sage Wynja of Lyons. Senior Yosef Heldt helped push the Sentinels over the top, placing fourth with a time of 16:38.5.

Banning Lewis Preparatory, which finished runner-up to Golden View at the 2A Region 2 meet, was runner-up again with a score of 85. Wiggins was third at 88.

The individual championship went to Colorado Springs Christian School junior Andrew Bel, who’s time of 16:16.6 surprisingly earned him just the second win of his high school career.

“It was so awesome. It was just a joy,” said Bel, who placed ninth as a sophomore last season. “Right now, I’ve only got two high school wins – last week at regionals and today. For my second high school win to be a state championship is just amazing. It’s super exciting to come out here and win.”

Strasburg sophomore Dawit James (16:39.3) placed fifth. James also placed fifth as a freshman last season and now has two top-five finishes.

In the 2A girls race, it was the Nadia Campos show for the third straight year.

The Vanguard’s top runner, who did not lose a 2A race as a junior in 2023, won her third straight individual title with a time of 18:19.1 that shattered her previous 2A state meet record by 18 seconds.

“I’m just really happy and it helps keep me motivated,” Campos said. “My work is paying off at this time and I’m just really happy I was able to break my record again. That was the goal coming in, just doing better than last year.”

Campos now has a chance to win four titles in four years if she can win yet again as a senior in 2024.

After finishing runner-up in each of the past two seasons, the Heritage Christian girls took home the 2A team title with a score of 37.

“It was really great. Going into it, our coach just told us, ‘You guys can do it,’” said Heritage Christian sophomore Mikaela Kendall, who finished runner-up (19:22.6) individually. “We had this running joke that he would buy us HOKA slides if we won. Then he said he was going to buy them in advance because he had so much confidence in us to do it. That really helped us going in, I think. It was just really amazing.”

Lake County, which is second all-time with a total of 11 team titles, finished third with a score of 69.

Individually, Banning Lewis sophomore Alexia Gonzales, who placed fifth last season, finished third with a time of 19:44.4. Telluride sophomore Austin Cook (19:52.8) was fourth and Caprock Academy senior Taylor Skinner (20:09.3) was fifth.