Albuquerque Academy Extravaganza: Santa Fe Indian wins team title in small school division

ALBUQUERQUE

There was no denying the Santa Fe Indian School girls.

The Lady Braves were the favorites in the “C” group at the Albuquerque Academy Extravaganza and they didn’t disappoint.

The Braves placed two runners in the top five with junior Destiny Marquez and Destiny Chino garnering third- and fifth-place honors.

They also had Rayann Concho place 16th, Kendra Emery at 22nd and Alexis Aguino at 30th.

The five runners earned them a team score of 68 points, which was 31 points better than Roswell’s Gateway Christian, the second place team.

“It means a lot,” SFIS coach Joe Calabaza said. “We had 25 teams in that division and we came out on top, which is great.”

Calabaza said he was missing freshman Danielle Smith in Saturday’s race, which gave them a split time of 3:07.

“We didn’t bring our No. 2 runner so our No. 4 would have been our fifth runner today,” he said. “The gap time was a little off but it was still impressive.”

Entering the final stretch of the race, Marquez fell short to Navajo Prep’s Nicole Tsosie in a photo finish.

The two runners were separated by a mere eight-tenth of a second with Tsosie clocking in at 21:05.29.

“I’m so mad at myself,” Marquez said, who was timed at 21:06.09. “I need to practice on my sprinting because that’s one thing that I suck at. I like pushing myself and I used it all on the course so once I get to the finish line I had nothing left, so it’s hard.”

After coming into the season out of shape, Marquez said they’re slowly shrinking their pack time.

“At the beginning of the season we were kind of spread out but we’re slowly getting there,” she said. “We’re starting to run together.”

And although they won their race, the SFIS ace runner said they paid attention to winners from the “B” group.

“Our main competition is Cottonwood (Classical Prep),” Marquez said. “We’re slowly getting up to them. We’re doing good and I’m proud of my girls.”

At the Los Lunas meet earlier this month, the Albuquerque private school beat Santa Fe Indian for the team title by 15-point margin.

“That’s who were going to matchup against for state,” Calabaza said. “We’re starting our speed work and hopefully that helps us at the end, so it’ll be interesting to see how we do against them.”

The Braves will have a bye this week and they’ll be at Las Vegas Robertson for the District 2-3A meet with Raton, Santa Fe Prep, St. Michael’s, Robertson and West Las Vegas making up the six-team district.

“Santa Fe Prep has a good boys and girls program,” he said. “When we ran against them they were right behind us.”

In addition to his girls, Calabaza said he would like to get his boys to state as well.

At the Academy meet the boys placed ninth in the team standing headed by the 29th-place finish from Jeremiah Chavez.

“Not to sound too positive but we should probably have the boys in there,” he said. “They didn’t do as well here but I feel like we’re pretty strong.

We’re running well now and we’re just getting ready for district and state,” he said.

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