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This is a story about heartbreak.
And camaraderie. And leadership. And character.
All of that was on display at the Class1A-3A New Mexico state track and field championships last weekend.
With the shadows beginning to get longer at the University of New Mexico Soccer and Track Complex, Socorro’s Kyle Berger grimly tried to maintain the lead his teammates had provided in the medley relay.
The Warriors had entered the event with the best time in the preliminaries, but 3A track coaches know that St. Michael’s can never quite be counted out.
Berger, the sun glinting off his mirrored shades as he ran his second 800-meter race of the afternoon, gave everything his body had left, but he could not forestall the Horsemen’s Everett Kuhn from pulling alongside then surging ahead.
The final result left the Warriors with a silver medal in a time of 3 minutes, 41.70 seconds, just a second behind St. Mike’s.
Distraught, Berger wandered alone on the track for a few moments until teammate Isaiah Ocampo grabbed him in a bear hug.
“He’s a damn good runner,” Ocampo later said of Berger. “Anybody that tells you otherwise is wrong. He’s a damn good runner. And I was telling him that, ‘There’s nothing wrong with what you just ran. Nothing wrong with it. You ran a damn good leg.’ The only thing that would change anything from what we just did right now is if he doesn’t come back and win something else next year. This should not be a wake up call, but a kick in the right direction. That’s what I told him.”
It was a poignant, bittersweet moment.
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“In the state meet, there’s always a lot of heartbreak,” Socorro coach Anthony Baker said. “And some successes.”
This moment was one of those rare instances capturing both.
Ocampo’s brother, freshman Ezra Ocampo, got Socorro off to a roaring start in the first 200 leg and senior Jeremiah Garza followed with an equally quick 200 before the baton went to Isaiah Ocampo for the third leg.
“It’s not really a heartbreaker because we PRed (personal record) by a couple of seconds,” Isaiah Ocampo said. “We didn’t get the place that we thought we were going to get; that we wanted, but it doesn’t matter. We matter. All that matters is that time went down a couple of seconds from before. Everybody sold out, it just didn’t go the way we wanted.”
Baker said that assessment is accurate.
“In something like this, everybody wants to point to the last runner,” he said. “But there were all kinds of things that could have been just a little better. St. Mike’s is just a track powerhouse of a team. His leg was 2:02, 2:03, and he just did that in the open 800 earlier in the day so to do that twice is incredible.”
Seeing the raw feelings from the athletes was a moment to remember, Baker added.
“A big takeaway was seeing the emotions they felt and showed,” he said of the quartet. “It meant a lot. It showed that they cared a lot; that’s what they felt about it. It’s important to see that they cared a lot. It was important for the other, younger athletes who look up to them so see that they cared that much about it.”
With Isaiah Ocampo adding a silver in the discus and joined on that podium with a third from junior Julian Aldrich, who also added a bronze in the shot put, they led the Warriors to 29 total points and a seventh-place finish.
The Socorro girls did not fair quite as well, scoring six points to tie for 14th, but sophomore Breanne Lucero reached fourth in the pole vault.
In class 1A, the Magdalena boys scored 21 points for ninth place, with Ky Stephens scoring 10½ points on the strength of a runner-up finish in the 110 hurdles and third in the triple jump.
Stephens, however, wasn’t all that impressed with his results.
“Did all right,” he said of his silver in the short hurdles. “I PRed so it can’t be too bad, but, it’s only a silver.”
As for what led to his second, he said, “Run hard. I didn’t really have a strategy. Get after it.
Alamo Navajo eighth grader Ania Torres put on a show, collecting all nine of the Cougars points, good for 11th place. She took second in the 800, using a deadly closing kick to surge past a runner at the finish. She added a fourth in the 400 and sixth in the 1600.
“I think I could have gotten first if I didn’t get boxed in right here,” she said of the front straightaway in the 800. “I tried to pick it up, but I couldn’t because there were two girls in front of me and a girl on the side. So I kind of slowed down to get around them and I was sprinting to get back.”
When Torres got the last runner in her sights, it was extra motivation.
“I saw that she was slowing down, so I really kicked up my knees and pushed my arms a lot more so I could catch her,” she said. “I’m really happy. I do wish I got first, but I’m happy with the place I did get, especially since I’ve got four more years.”
Alamo Navajo senior Andy Pino took fourth in the discus and freshman teammate Pherrell Herrera also had a fourth in the 3200.
The Magdalena girls got three points from two relay teams.
Class 3A
SOCORRO
Boys (29 points, seventh place)
Isaiah Ocampo, discus, second, 129-11
Julian Aldrich, discus, third, 127-5
Julian Aldrich, shot put, third, 43-07
AD Munguia, pole vault, sixth, 10-6
Isaiah Ocampo, 100 dash, sixth, 11.53
Kyle Berger, 800 run, fifth, 2:02.76
4X200, fourth, 1:33.20 (Ezra Ocampo, Jeremiah Garza, Ruben Gonzales, Isaiah Ocampo)
Medley relay, second, 3:41.70 (Ezra Ocampo, Jeremiah Garza, Isaiah Ocampo, Kyle Berger)
Girls (6 points, tie 14th place)
Adrianna Gutierrez, long jump, sixth 14-11 3/4
Breanne Lucero, pole vault, fourth, 7-06
Sierra Bunning, pole vault, sixth, 7-00
4X100, sixth, 54.32 (Ma’Leah Brown, Adrianna Gutierrez, Sienna Bunning, Miquelia Padilla)
MAGDALENA
Boys (21 points, ninth place)
Joe Zamora, shot put, fourth, 37-11 1/2
Ky Stephens, triple jump, third, 40-11
Ky Stephens, 110 hurdles, second, 16.79
4X200 relay, fifth, 1:38.90 (EJ Lucero, Prescott Herrera, Ayden Herschbach, Ky Stephens)
Ky Stephens, 300 hurdles, sixth, 47.08
4X400 relay, fifth, 3:46.93 (Prescott Herrera, Ayden Herschbach, Ky Stephens, Nathan Bruton)
Girls (3 points, 18th place)
4X800 relay, fifth, 11:09.61 (Jema Ganadonegro, Brooke Pettis, Jorianne Mirabal, Kali Bruton)
4X400 relay, sixth, 4:41.13 (Amberlee Apachito, Jewel Mirabal, Jorianne Mirabal, Kali Bruton)
ALAMO NAVAJO
Boys (six points, 15th place)
Andy Pino, discus, fourth, 119-03
Pherrell Herrera, 3200 run, fourth, 11:27.81
Girls (9 points, 11th place)
Ania Torres, 800 run, second, 2:32.99
Ania Torres, 400 run, fourth, 1:04.42 Ania Torres, 1600 run, sixth, 6:03.61
