Hilltoppers sharpen form at Albuquerque meet, eyeing district and state run

Los Alamos High School track and field left the Richard Harper Memorial Meet with a clearer picture of where it stands heading into the season’s final stretch. The two-day invitational at Albuquerque Academy on April 24-25 drew a selective field with minimum entry standards, giving the Hilltoppers a chance to measure themselves against many of the state’s larger 5A programs before the schedule tightens for district and state.

That matters for a program with recent championship credentials. Los Alamos won both the boys and girls district titles in 2025, and the boys captured a third straight Class 4A state championship in 2023 while the girls also won the state title that year. Against that backdrop, a strong showing at Harper is less about one weekend and more about confirming that the Hilltoppers are trending in the right direction before the meets that decide the spring.

The next checkpoint comes fast. The Larry Baca Invite is set for Saturday, May 2, at Sullivan Field in Los Alamos, and the local meet will now carry added weight as a home-stage preview of what the Hilltoppers want to sharpen before the championship rounds. After that, the postseason begins in earnest with the 2026 NMAA 5A State Track and Field Championships scheduled for May 15-16 at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque.

That state field will be deep. MileSplit New Mexico’s listed 5A lineup includes programs such as La Cueva, Rio Rancho, Sandia, Albuquerque High, Los Lunas, Organ Mountain and others, the kind of statewide competition that turns every race, jump and throw into a test of both consistency and depth. Harper offered a useful rehearsal for that environment because it was a two-day meet with prelims and finals and a broad mix of classes, which is why local observers have long treated it as a dry run for state.

Los Alamos has also used the Harper stage well before. In a previous Harper Invite report, the girls finished second overall to Albuquerque Academy, while the boys beat Cleveland 105-82, results that reinforced the program’s ability to compete against larger schools in a crowded invitational setting. That history gives the Hilltoppers another reason to view the meet as more than a stopover: it has been a recurring benchmark for whether Los Alamos is peaking at the right time.

With Sullivan Field next and Albuquerque’s state venue close behind, the Hilltoppers enter the final two weeks with momentum, proven experience and the kind of competitive schedule that can turn a solid spring into another championship run.