Southwest Girls Win Class 1 Crown
Published: Tuesday, May 26, 2009 by Paul Sturm, C-T

Paul Sturm, Sports Editor, Constitution-Tribune, Chillicothe

JEFFERSON CITY — At about 3:45 p.m. Saturday during the Missouri State High School Activities Association’s Class 1 track and field state championships, senior star Sindy Chavez of the Southwest R-1 Lady Wildcats used an interview with a reporter about a near-miraculous winning finish to "call her shot" for an event which would take place 90 minutes later. She’d chased down Lone Jack's Nikki Harris, who had beaten her decisively in the finals of the 100-meter high hurdles early in the afternoon, coming from more than a stride behind in the final 40 meters to – with a desperate, all-out lunge at the wire – claim first place in the 300-meter low hurdles for the second year in a row.

After receiving her medal, Chavez was asked if claiming a state title in her last individual event as a prep athlete provided a perfect ending to her career. "It's great, but I still have the 4-by-400 relay to run," she responded. "Winning that would make it perfect." She didn't know for sure then just how perfect.

An hour-and-a-half after sharing those thoughts, with one event remaining, Southwest held a slender lead over Mound City, 38-36, at the top of the team standings. With any of a few finishing combinations in that last race, Southwest would be an undisputed team-sport state champion for the first time ever. Multiple other combinations could leave it a co-champion and still others could result in Mound City passing it by to take the title.

So it was that, following strong, once-around trips circling Lincoln University's Dwight T. Reed Stadium track by teammates Hannah Stilwell, Alexandra Black, and Katie Myers, Chavez accepted the baton for the anchor leg of the 4-by-400-meters relay in second place –behind Mound City. Beat MCHS's last runner back to the finish line and Southwest would be champion. Maintain that order and the two teams would be co-champs. See Mound City win and let another team pass her and Southwest would have to settle for runner-up.

With the knowledge of what rode on her one trip around the circuit, Chavez stalked the leader down the backstretch, moved to the second lane on the final curve to draw alongside, and came off the turn for the final 90 meters taking the lead. With the rest of the Southwest team and its contingent of family, friends, and supporters perched in the grandstands near the finish line, like a magnet, inexorably pulling her down the track, Chavez opened a sliver of daylight and didn't give her opponent any hint of weakness which might spur a last-ditch comeback. Providing that truly perfect finish she'd envisioned 90 minutes before, by a half-stride, the Southwest senior came across the line first and so did the Lady Wildcats, capturing the school's first state title in athletics in its 50-years-plus since reorganization created a new high school to serve residents of the Dawn, Ludlow, Utica, and Mooresville regions in southern and western Livingston County.

"I told them at the beginning of the year we could win state," Lady Wildcats coach Erin Stevenson commented after she joined her squad in a low-speed victory lap after receiving the first-place trophy. "They didn't believe me, I don't think." However, after handily winning the Carroll-Livingston Athletics Association conference meet in late April and the Class 1 district meet May 9, the team members' horizons expanded to embrace their coach's vision of their potential. When that happened, they set the bit in their teeth, she said, perhaps inspired by the unprecedented heights scaled by the Lady Wildcats basketball team of which a handful were key members this year.

Southwest's cagers also won their first CLAA title in more than 30 years, added a first-ever district crown, and came within a few minutes and points of advancing to the state semifinals and finals. "They had a lot of (self-imposed) pressure on them," their coach related. "They wanted it bad." That desire was reflected in how they reacted when adversity presented itself Saturday.

When the Lady Wildcats didn't emerge with the amount of points they'd hoped for from a couple of events, the final points-total target Stevenson had plotted Friday night for putting them in the winner's circle at meet's end was becoming harder and harder to attain. "We got in a funk for a while, but managed to pull out of it just in time," the coach confirmed. However, Chavez's stirring come-from-behind win in the 300 hurdles produced two more points than she looked like she'd earn. Then freshman Caitlin Cramer channeled the cool-as-a-cucumber basketball persona which had made her a key factor off the bench in the cage Lady Wildcats' postseason run. Having had only the ninth-fastest sectional-race time among the 16 state runners, she charged from eighth after one lap to a third-place finish in the two-lap 800-meter run. Instead of zero to three points in the race at the best, Southwest picked up six and, more or less, was back on track with accumulating the number of points it projected to need to take the title. "Caitlin getting third in the 800 was a big help," Stevenson agreed.

That left it up to the 4-by-400 quartet to do what had to be done in a head-to-head showdown. "We met in a circle and prayed and then helped give each other a pep talk," senior Stilwell described what transpired leading up to the decisive race. "We weren't going to stop for the pain or anything. We wanted it and we got it!" Related Stevenson, "We had a big pep talk and the girls went out and made it happen."

Mound City had the fastest time, just over a second faster than Southwest's, in Friday's preliminary races which trimmed the field from 16 to eight. However, with the vagaries of a relay race – the potential for slow or fast handoffs or one or more of the four runners having a good or bad day, that one-second difference was not of overwhelming significance. With a good performance, either had a solid chance to finish ahead of the other and be at or near the top of the final results. When each came up with a reasonably-close repetition of their previous day's showing, Southwest's slightly-better performance was enough to get the nod and the overall team title.