Cross-country preview: LA’s Tagoya Pedro, Miyamura’s Kylie Montano are early favorites

GALLUP

As one would expect, there was some familiarity in the way things turned out during Saturday’s cross-country scrimmage at Gallup High School.

Laguna Acoma senior Tagoya Pedro and Miyamura senior Kylie Montano picked up where they left last season as the two harriers won their respective races by a large margin on the 3.1-mile course.

“My goal is to race strong at every meet, and just run my heart out,” Pedro said. “Last year, I put everything I had into my races, and nothing has changed.”

Montano, who recently took four weeks off to rehab a stress fracture, says she’s ready for the season.

“I’m excited,” Montano said. “I want to try and break into the 17s this year.”

At Saturday’s scrimmage, Montano led a quartet of Miyamura runners as Shelby Haskie, Aubrey Martin and Shelby McCray chased the Miyamura ace.

“They have a lot of potential this year,” Miyamura coach Manuelito Reeves said of the team’s prospect. “We have a good 1-2-3-4. We’re working on our fifth runner. We just have to get that backdoor runner up there with our frontrunners.”

Montano was equally impressed with how the team did as the Patriots will be challenging for a district title in 1-4A. Last season, they took third behind district rivals Shiprock and Gallup.

“We’re all feeling fantastic,” Montano said. “We’re all shooting for running six-, seven-minute miles so I think we’ll do well this year.”

Haskie says Montano sets the pace and the rest of the team follows suit.

“Shelby is a great runner, and I just want to stay behind because she motivates me to run,” Haskie said. “She motivates all of us to run. I feel like if we can stick together, we’ll wins some meets this year.”

Miyamura will test that notion during the Náshdóítsoh Invite at Hamburger Hill as Tohatchi High is hosting the area’s first meet with five races on Friday afternoon.

The middle school races will start at 3 p.m. with girls followed by boys at 3:30 p.m. At 4 p.m., the varsity girls race will get underway followed by varsity boys at 4:30 p.m. The last race will feature a combined JV boys and girls race that is slated for 5 p.m.

Tohatchi coach Dion John is expecting to have 10 middle school teams and at least a dozen high school teams.

“We really don’t know the numbers right now, but it’s going to be competitive,” John said while adding that Crownpoint, Gallup, Miyamura, Navajo Prep, Shiprock, St. Michael Indian School, Thoreau, Wingate, and Zuni have already confirmed.

The Tohatchi girls had juniors Kaylee Mitchell and Catherine Denetclaw finished in the top 10 during Saturday’s scrimmage.

“They’re both good runners,” John said. “We still in our base training, and they’re starting to learn the team aspect for our boys and girls team.”

The Tohatchi coach says his boys team is more experienced. His top runners include freshman Blake Chee and juniors Brant Dauphanias and Izlynvario Joe.

At Saturday’s scrimmage, Dauphanias finished third behind Pedro and Miyamura’s Izaiah Freeland.

“For this race, I executed pretty well,” Pedro said. “I had a solid time for the start of the season, and I know that I can improve in areas that are needed.

“So far, I’m happy with what I did today,” he added.

Freeland finished a distant second, but the Miyamura coach says his senior harrier is right where he needs to be at.

“It’s still early,” McReeves said. “We have a solid boys team, too, and we want them to be peaking at the end of the season.”

In addition to Freeland, the Patriots are expecting big things from senior Elijah Begay, sophomore Chad Chatto and juniors Stevie Peterson and Kaden Watson.

“We have some potential as far as the boys team,” McReeves said while noting that his squad will be tested at the UNM Invite, Rio Rancho Jamboree and the Los Alamos meet later this year.

“We want to run against some of the top teams in the state,” McReeves said. “We’ll see a lot of our 4A competition at those meets. That is what we want to run against.”

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