BROOMFIELD — Teri Heffner wasn’t the first, second or even third runner across the finish line. She wasn’t even the 10th or 11th. But once she finished the 1,600-meter race in 6 minutes, 58.89 seconds on May 13 at Holy Family High School Heffner was something else — a league champion.

The Clear Creek senior, one of only two Frontier League runners in the event that included participants from the Metro League at the joint meet, easily beat out Lake County’s Daniela Duran for one of two individual titles claimed by the Golddiggers.
Clear Creek finished fourth in the boys standings with 77 points, while the girls team was fifth with 44. Middle Park won both the boys and girls league titles.
Duran finished nearly a minute behind in a time of 7:51.21. While Heffner’s time won’t qualify her for this week’s 3A state meet — only the top 18 times throughout the 2011 season advance — it was enough to win a league title. In years past that would’ve been good enough to go to state, but not this year. And winning a league title in spite of the circumstances, well, that’s a story in itself.
“It took away from it a little bit only because I had nobody to run with. The girl behind me was quite a bit slower than me and the Metro girls were quite a bit faster than me. So I was running by myself and I think that affected my time,” said Heffner, who ran the third leg of Clear Creek’s second-place 4x200 relay team’s finish.
But in spite of finishing 13th in a 14-runner race, Heffner still won a league championship.
Clear Creek’s other title came in the boys high jump where Philipp Sprung, one of two Golddiggers to qualify for state, won with a leap of 6 feet even. He will be joined this weekend at state by Mollie Quaranto in the 200. She placed second at the league meet in 27.36 seconds.
Other second-place finishes came from Sprung in the triple jump (38-1.25), Alberto Delgado in the long jump (18-11) and Bill Schvetz in the 1,600 (5:07.89). While Schvetz had Platte Canyon’s Canyon Cook nipping at his heels, finishing less than four seconds back, it was the running of pace leader Robert Tekansik of Lake County that pushed him.
“I felt I ran more consistent than I usually am. I was just chasing the Lake County kid. He was the one who dictated the pace out in front. I tried to match that,” Schvetz said.
The girls’ 4x200 relay team placed third in 1:55.67, as did Delgado in the 100 in 11.94. The fact that he did that is somewhat surprising, if for no other reason, he wasn’t expecting to run the race.
The event was scheduled for May 11 — a day in which he was unavailable — but was pushed back two days due to inclement weather.
“I took third place. It could’ve been better, but I wasn’t prepared for the 100,” Delgado said. “My coach didn’t tell me I was running it. But I’ll take third.”