Not so lost in the woods

I was really lucky to grow up in the small community of Westcliffe, Colorado, where it seemed like there were people there to help me at every turn. I attended the same small school for 12 years. I went to daycare and preschool with several kids that were in school with me until I graduated. Two of them, Kaya Huffman and Brooke Flynn, went to Happy Hearts preschool and daycare with me when we were two years old, and were in the same class with me all the way to high school graduation. In a bigger school I probably would have never had the experiences I had at Custer County. So many of my teachers, coaches, classmates and their families supported me along the way.

Early on in school, I enjoyed music classes like band and choir. I also liked art. When I first started in band in middle school, I played a variety of different drums. Also, I had the same teacher, Carrie Smith, in art class from Kindergarten through high school. My art projects earned me awards in the annual spring fine arts show, where I also performed in band and choir.

When I got to high school, it was my chance to try again in the mainstream classrooms. In middle school I would spend most of my day in the resource room and go to just one or two regular classes. In high school, even though I went to more mainstream classes, I still spent up to two class periods in the resource room. This would continue throughout my high school years.

During my freshman year of high school, I joined the choir. Mrs. Peachey was a great choir teacher. She at first put me into the alto group because my voice had not changed yet. The choir was pretty big and almost everybody in it accepted me for who I was. We performed a Christmas show, sang the National Anthem at games, and had a spring concert. I have “perfect pitch” and it would sometimes cause me problems when people next to me were off-key. One of the choir members, Makenna Reiff, who has a brother with Tourette’s syndrome, helped me out with my occasional issues.

A highlight of my choir experience was a performance with two other regional schools at the Salida High School auditorium. That day, we had to leave our school early in the morning to get there in time to rehearse. We ended up practicing all day long with a lunch break. Then around 7 p.m., the performance began, first with the middle school choirs, then followed by us singing “Tres Cantos Nativos,” “Till The Stars Fall From the Sky,” and “Wade In the Water.” After this, the high school and middle school joined to sing a piece called “Stand Together.” 

Running on the cross-country and track teams opened up a whole new world for me. I loved being outside in the fresh air and the activity helped calm my brain. I started running cross-country in sixth grade. My first coach, Jack Swartz, had been my fourth grade teacher. My dad signed on as a volunteer coach to help out. I also started track in middle school with Coach Traci Terry.

There were some adventures early on in middle school. In one track meet at Mosca, I did pretty well in the 400-meter run, but in the 800-meter run, at the end of my first lap, I fell down. It took me a few seconds to get back on my feet. That was when one of the coaches from Alamosa, Justin Bethea, appeared and ran my second lap with me. After this, I threw a minor fit on the turf. I was feeling bad because I had cuts on both my knee and my hand. Then, my friend Bailey, who was a jumper on the team, came over to comfort me and said, “It’s OK. I can’t even run that far.” I felt better that she cheered me up. This was just just another instance showing how there were often special people looking out for me and helping me to succeed.

When Coach Swartz moved to Arvada, Jesse Taylor took his place. Eventually Jesse moved on and my dad took over as head high school cross-country coach and assistant track coach.

In high school we ran cross-country and track in towns all over southern Colorado. Between cross-country and track I competed in around 150 races, even though I missed my entire sophomore track season and had an abbreviated cross-country season my junior year because of the Covid-19 pandemic. I especially liked the courses in Monte Vista and Salida, though I usually placed better when there were more hills. There was one big hill in the Salida course. When you go down that hill, you have to be extremely careful not to fall and hurt yourself. It was fun running down it and it made me feel like I was flying.

I had some amazing teammates over the years. Kaya and Brooke who had been friends since daycare ran cross-country. Also, there were friends from other classes I’d grown up with like Joey Arnone, Brooke Bomgardner, Emma Rusk, Kyleigh Martin, Jonah Carichner, and the Zellers – Betsy, Noel, Elias, Micah and Laurel. Micah particularly was an inspiration. He and his brother Elias were Ethiopian and had been adopted by the Zeller family when they were very young. He was initially homeschooled, then went to a public school in Wyoming before returning to Westcliffe. In his senior year Micah placed second in the state cross-country championships and then won the 3200 meters in the state track championships.

I had so many great experiences in cross-country and track. A favorite memory is running the Cheyenne Mountain Stampede “Pre-State” meet at the Norris Penrose Event Center starting in my sophomore year. This is the same 5K course as the state championship meet. The year before, I ran in the Unified Race at state which is on a shorter 3K course. But this time I was excited to have this opportunity to run the full 5K. So I guess you could say I ran in the state championships in my mind.

When my dad started coaching he began taking us to the cross-country meet in Leadville early in the season. This course was on cross-country ski trails at 10,000 feet altitude. The start was on a flat field then went right into the forest where there was a curvy trail with many steep hills both up and down. Runners were warned by their coaches to not go all out on the downhills because then the uphills would feel impossible. One year Kaya missed a turn and got lost out there for over an hour. I thought about the song “Lost in the Woods” from the movie Frozen as a theme for what happened that day and even requested it for Kaya at Homecoming dance later that night. Little did I know then that someday these Leadville trails would become my home training grounds.

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