State champs

It may have been 11 years since Carson High girls cross country last won a state title, but the future is here for the Senators after this weekend’s Class 5A state cross country meet in Boulder City.

Prior to heading south, the team had done the math on how it needed to finish in order to secure the fewest points possible.

If the six athletes ran their race, it was likely that Carson was going to end up on top of the state.

“It was pretty clear in sight with how many points we were ahead in regionals,” said sophomore Eleanor Romeo. “The math we (did) over the week.”

“We talked about it. If they could just run the same race as regionals,” said head coach Jason Macy, “All the numbers, everything worked out the same.”

The Carson girls program had won four state titles since the turn of the century, with the most recent coming in 2011.

This year was the program’s first title in the recently formed Class 5A.

“It’s wild,” said sophomore Jinnie Ponczoch. “It’s been a while since Carson has won state and that’s pretty cool.”

(The Carson High girls cross country team holds up the Class 5A state championship trophy after winning the team title by eight points. Pictured from left to right are assistant coach Janie Davis, Eleanor Romeo, Madison Hager, Sydney Romeo, Jinnie Ponczoch (holding trophy), Hannah Budd, Brianna Rodriguez-Nunez, Vea Miner and head coach Jason Macy. / Courtesy Dan Davis)

Staying within themselves

With the math already worked out, the Senators were eyeing fellow runners whom they had finished around all season.

The Senators didn’t have a single runner place inside of the top five, but they didn’t need to with just a 38-second gap between the first Carson runner and the fifth scoring runner to cross the line.

Freshman Hannah Budd was the first Carson runner across the line in seventh in a time of 19:42.6.

Vea Miner, a freshman, and Ponczoch were 11^th and 13^th, respectively, finishing within 25 seconds of Budd.

Freshman Brianna Rodriguez-Nunez stopped the watch in 20:17.5 to take 16^th while fellow freshman Madison Hager was 17^th in 20:20.

Eleanor Romeo took 40^th for Carson in 21:22.6 while senior Sydney Romeo was 72^nd overall and replaced Ella Dooley, who battled an injury while running at regionals.

All in all, seven Senators ran in the state meet, but the scores from the top five are how the title was calculated.

“If anything, the focus on you individually was who you were supposed to catch from the other team,” said Budd.

Some of that was tracking down teammates, who have run against each other long before donning the Senator royal blue and white.

Four of the Senators are members of the same church and almost all of them were competing either with or against each other in the middle school ranks.

“I think we’ve been together as a group since like second grade,” said Eleanor Romeo.

“Maddie (Hager) and Vea (Miner) were like my enemies,” said Budd of their middle school competitions. “We were frenemies, but we were super excited to finally be on the same team.”

Hager said she would get nervous going against Budd in middle school.

“They are definitely much, much closer now as a team than they were the first day of practice,” said Macy, who coached the Senators to a state title in 2001. “They were coming in as adversaries. Vegas was so much fun because they are all together and goofy together.”

Sydney Romeo will be the only runner to graduate from the state championship team, leaving Carson in the driver’s seat for next season.

“This team really feels like a family,” said Rodriguez-Nunez. “We’re all very supportive of each other. It’s been really nice team bonding.”

It’ll be the most recent state championship banner at the school, once it’s raised.