Eaglecrest Track and Field has been a sport at Eaglecrest since the school opened in 1991. Many great athletes have gone through the program, seeing as Eaglecrest has won 15 state championships since 1991. However, the program has been the biggest it has ever been in the past couple of years since Coach Carhart became the head coach and introduced a variety of new methods. This change of coaching happened in 2021. In recent years, there has been a plethora of school records and state championships. In 2024, Eaglecrest won 5 state championships, got first place at state in the boys 4 by 400m relay, and the boys and girls 4 by 100m relay. The girls team won the 4 by 200m relay and Zenobia Witt got first place in long jump. So, how did all of these athletes get here?

In the boys’ 4 X 400m relay team that won state in 2024, there were two juniors, Evan Keppy and Thierry Asare, two seniors, Cam Chapa and Peace Warah, and finally, the sophomore that got them to the finals, Bryson States. So, how did these Eaglecrest students go from being normal students to becoming state winners overnight? Evan Keppy, who was one of the juniors on this team, didn’t always want to be a runner.

“I started running when I was cut from the summer freshman basketball team,” said Keppy. “Cross country was my only option left to participate in a sport, and I gave it a try.”

Just like Keppy, Thierry Asare, the other junior on the team, never expected to run track in high school.

“I was in PE one time and then the track coach called me over and said ‘Hey, I heard you are pretty fast, I want you to come run track for us’,” said Asare. “So after that, I started running for the team and I realized that I’m good at it and I liked it, so I stayed.”

When I asked each of the athletes which coach supported them the most, they all had different answers. 

“Long distance coach Coach Mingm made running not only a physical endeavor, but a mental one as well,” said Keppy. “He was always willing to work with me and strategize my races/workouts to make sure I was the best athlete I could be.”

“Every single one of the coaches made it enjoyable,” said Asare. “Coach Carhart, Coach Robinson, Coach Bible, Coach Bree, Coach Padilla, Coach Prescorn, and all the coaches made it enjoyable.”

In addition to Keppy and Asare, States didn’t know that he was going to do track either. With that being said, he has known he has liked to run for a long time.

“I’ve been running since I was 6,” said States. “We had a field day at our school, and I loved it. Since then, my love for running has grown and been stronger than ever these past two years.”

Eric Hill Jr was the only junior on the boys 2024 4 by 100m winning relay team. The seniors on this team included Jeffery Poku, Noah Brown, and Peace Warah. Eric Hill Jr had been involved in track before he joined high school.

“I did club track for a while so I think that is what made it easier to make that change from middle school to high school track,” said Hill Jr.

On the women’s side of the team, Tatum Gratrix, Jaylynn Wilson, and Malanya Gaines got the girls 4 by 100m relay team to the finals. Anaya Ewing ran in the finals for them and Zenobia Witt won the women’s 4 by 100m relay and the women’s 4 by 200m relay. Zenobia Witt also won Long Jump as a freshman. Jaylynn Wilson was a junior during the 2024 state relays, but she had also won state her sophomore year (2023) and her freshman year (2022). Wilson is the only runner at Eaglecrest that has won 3 years in a row. 

“It’s a really really cool thing, but I think what’s even cooler is the girls that we have done it with,” said Wilson. “Every year we’ve kind of came in as the underdog. Like freshman year, we had two soccer players, a cheerleader, and a freshman on our team. Sophomore year was pretty much a completely new team. Same with last year. So I feel like we’ve always been seen kind of as the underdogs, and it’s been amazing to win with those girls.” 

Eaglecrest is known to be an underdog because our community is so diverse. Eaglecrest has one of the biggest track teams in the state of Colorado. 

So what made Wilson become a runner?

“One of my reasons is because my grandpa ran in college,” said Wilson. “He went to KU rock hawk by the way. He was the reason why I wanted to run. The other reason was because when I was a kid, all I did was run around in circles, and so they put me in track.”

Tatum Gratrix won the 4 by 100m relay and the 4 by 200m relay last year when she was just a sophomore.

“I started track because I just wanted to in 8th grade,” said Gratrix.

She joined track in middle school simply because she wanted to, and then a year later, she became a 2 time state champion.

Malanya Gaines was a freshman when she won state with Eaglecrest’s 4 by 100m team. This was not Gaines’ first time running; she has been running for a long time.

“When I was running at 7, my parents put me into track because they thought that I had potential, and I really grew into it,” said Gaines.

Gaine’s plans to continue to grow and not let anyone get her down, as she still has 2 more years with the Eaglecrest track program.

Zenobia Witt didn’t only win the 4 by 100m relay and the 4 by 200m relay when she was a freshman. She also won long jump. Family has a huge impact on a person, especially when they are still a teenager.

“My sibling did track, so I have been doing track since I was 4 years old,” said Witt.

All of these people wanted to join track for different reasons, yet they all ended with the same story. They won state track in 2024 and plan to keep on winning as their team expands.

It is important to understand who helped these athletes get to where they are today. Coach Carhart brought in a new team of coaches with him when he arrived at Eaglecrest. As of 2025, Coach Carhart teaches weight training as well as being the head coach of Eaglecrest’s track and field team. Running such a big team and making them feel like one big family is hard, yet, Coach Carhart does it perfectly. 

“I think that a great team and a great experience is based around the environment that you create, and making kids have a safe place where they have fun and they want to be there, and success is a byproduct of that,” said Carhart.

Coach Carhart came to Eaglecrest with a vision of his team, and he is doing a great job of making that vision come true.

Because there were so many seniors on the relay teams last year, many have been worried that the team would not be able to come back. 

“Although we’re now missing some vital seniors to our program, we’re still strong as ever,” said Keppy.

“We have a lot of underclassmen that came in that have a lot of talent,” said Wilson. “A lot of the freshman girls that came up are going to do a lot of damage on the track.”

“I do think that we are going to bounce back,” said Carhart. “There’s a lot of kids that were just ready to step up into those roles and worked really hard to do it.”

The Eaglecrest track team isn’t the type of team to only care about the seniors or ignore the underclassmen because of their age. This shows that Eaglecrest cares about every person on the team. 

There is still a lot more success to come!