Hilltopper girls win Larry Baca meet, boys take second at Sullivan Field

Los Alamos High School used the Larry Baca Memorial Invitational to send a clear postseason message: the girls are rolling, and the boys still have room to climb. In a 14-team field at Sullivan Field, the Hilltopper girls won with 134 points, well ahead of Artesia’s 45, while the boys finished second at 97-129, a result that still left LAHS with a stack of state-qualifying marks and top-10 performances heading into championship season.

The meet was especially revealing in the sprints and middle-distance races. Rylee Gramer ran 11.05 in the 100 meters and Chris Teague added an 11.22, while Jacob Hilderbrand clocked 22.50 in the 200. Jens Wald-Hopkins posted the kind of marks that tend to travel deep into May, moving to No. 2 all-time in school history in both the 200 at 21.47 and the 400 at 48.16. Evangelina Gutierrez also cracked the LAHS record book, taking No. 7 all-time in the 100 with a 12.25.

The Hilltoppers’ strongest state-readiness came from how many events produced pressure results at once. Tevi Funaki threw 133 feet, 9 inches in the discus. Abigail Swigert and Emmeline Keller-Moore went 2:27.93 and 2:27.99 in the 800, and Raina Passalacqua jumped 16 feet, 3 3/4 inches in the triple jump. The 4x100 relay of Gutierrez, Chloe Coffey, Passalacqua and Jayden Burns ran 48.34, good for No. 7 all-time at LAHS and a new home-meet record, the kind of performance that suggests the girls could still have a school-record run left if the baton exchanges sharpen again at district and state.

The boys’ runner-up finish showed both strength and a warning. Artesia’s 129 points made clear that LAHS cannot rely on isolated wins alone if it wants to match the top title threats, but Wald-Hopkins’ marks and the qualifier list gave the program multiple podium paths. The same was true across the roster, from Gramer, Teague and Hilderbrand on the track to Funaki, Swigert, Keller-Moore and Passalacqua in the field events. Even Los Alamos Middle School got into the record book, as Maliyah Vigil, Ayla Hawkley, Reese Hill and Zoe Romero broke the 4x400 relay standard in 4:21.22, a sign the pipeline remains deep.

The meet also carried the weight of its name. Larry Baca, a Los Alamos High School graduate from the class of 1974, starred in football, baseball, track, wrestling and basketball before returning to Los Alamos in 1984 to teach and coach for nearly three decades. The Los Alamos Public Schools Foundation later created a memorial scholarship for LAHS seniors in track or cross-country, and Baca was inducted into both the LAHS Hall of Fame and the New Mexico Coaches Hall of Fame. With the NMAA state championships scheduled for May 8-9 for A-3A and May 15-16 for 4A-5A, the Hilltoppers left Sullivan Field looking like a team with podium contenders, school-record potential and one last chance to tighten the edges before the postseason runs through Los Alamos.