Editor’s note: The Plaindealer is trying something new – publishing a sports column with information about local high school sports during the seasons for those sports. We don’t have the resources to publish stories about each athletic event, especially for two sets of teams from two separate school districts in a county of 5,000 people, but we hope you will find this new prep roundup column informative.

You might notice we have published photos of the track athletes at meets – that’s because we’re lucky enough to have David Emory contribute his high-quality photos. If you’re a photographer who would like to submit photos of game action for other local high school sports happening in Ouray County, please email erin@ouraynews. com. Please note we are able to consider photos of action and we are unable to use cellphone photos as they don’t reproduce well.

It can be challenging for runners, particularly younger ones, to allow an opponent to pull away, even while trying to keep their own pace. There’s something instinctual about wanting to run with the pack.

But Ridgway High School’s Ariel Hessler ran her own race in the 3,200 meters on Saturday during the Mickey Dunn Invitational in Grand Junction, allowing ThunderRidge’s Jetta Betts to seize an early lead. But by the halfway point, the Demons’ freshman had closed the gap and with about 1,000 meters to go, she passed her opponent from a much larger, suburban Denver school, one that has more than 1,800 students, almost double the population of the entire town of Ridgway. Hessler’s final time of 11 minutes, 28.03 seconds was more than two seconds ahead of Betts.

Her victory was one of many strong performances for the Demons as the Ridgway and Ouray track and field teams faced their toughest competition all season.

“She ran a really smart race,” coach Peter Hessler said of his daughter. “That’s a difficult thing to do and she handled it about as well as you could hope.”

Natasha Hessler edged out her twin sister in the 1,600-meter race as they finished fifth and sixth, respectively, at 5:26.59 and 5:26.78. They placed behind only one Western Slope competitor — Rangely’s Taya Wren — with the rest of the top spots occupied by Thunder-Ridge.

Battling a cold, Ridgway freshman Emery Cornell placed fourth in the 400 with a time of 1:02.95. She also had a season-best leap of 15 feet, five inches in the long jump to finish sixth.

“In the long jump, you tend to do better when you’re older,” the coach said. “For her to make that kind of jump when she’s still that small is huge. We expect great things from her.”

The Ridgway girls registered in the team standings, finishing 12th out of 25 teams who scored points.

Ouray, meanwhile, was paced by an all-around performance from Jeep Demuth, who placed 13th in the long jump, 20th in the 200 and 23rd in the 100. He also notched personal bests in all three events. Every Trojans athlete who competed achieved a personal best time or distance.

Trojans coach Eric Demuth said his son Jeep is battling for a chance to qualify for the state meet, and three consecutive weekends in Grand Junction for meets will help.

“This is the first meet where we’ve really had excellent conditions, especially for sprinters,” the coach said. “The Grand Junction meets are always the best meets we have for competition and weather.”

Ouray will head back to Stocker Stadium on Saturday for the Frank Woodburn Invitational. The following Saturday, they’ll be joined by Ridgway as both area teams return to compete at the Phil Wertman Invitational. On April 18, the teams will make the familiar trip back to Grand Junction for the Warrior Wild West Invitational, capping three consecutive weeks at the track near Colorado Mesa University.

Girls’ soccer

The Demons are 1-1-1 after splitting their two contests last week. On March 25, Ridgway handled Telluride 3-1 for its first victory of the season, powered by three goals from junior Addy Gardiner. Between her hat trick against the Miners and the marker in the 1-1 tie with Montezuma-Cortez to open the season, she’s scored all four times for the Demons and sits second in the 2A Intermountain League stat leaders for goals.

Ridgway followed up the victory with a 4-0 loss to reigning league champs and state semifinalist Crested Butte on Friday. The Titans netted two goals in each half to move to 4-1-2 on the season.

The Demons are off until April 8, when they’ll host undefeated Delta.

Matt Meyer is a Denver-based writer who has covered a variety of professional, college and high school sports for more than a decade, including extensive work on the Western Slope. You can reach out to him with questions or feedback at jmattmeyer@outlook.com.