Orion Catron first ran because he really, really didn’t want to walk.

As a freshman at Ridgway High School, he wasn’t connecting with classmates or pushing himself.

“I think my parents recognized this,” he said. “But they didn’t voice it aloud.”

Instead, his parents made a simple rule — either walk to school or compete in a sport during the fall season. Catron had no interest in soccer and he certainly didn’t want to walk to school every day, so he opted for cross country.

And, in his own words, that first season felt “really terrible.”

“But I didn’t want to give up because Coach (Trevor) Peterson said that I did great,” Catron said. “As I kept going and improving more, I started to come to two realizations: that I really had an untapped capability to run very fast, and that running doesn’t hurt any less; you just become stronger.”

This year, Catron finished fifth at the Ramble at the Reservoir on Sept. 19, then followed that up with a personal-best of 17 minutes, 36 seconds at the Sweitzer Lake Invitational in Delta on Sept. 26. It was the third-fastest boys’ time in school history, and he did it while in his sophomore year.

Untapped capability, indeed, and Peterson spotted it early in Catron’s journey. The coach calls them “young runners.” They’re early in their running journeys, using athleticism either innate or built in other sports. Catron’s dramatic improvement is what’s driving the recent success of the Demons’ boys’ cross country team.

“He’s a super young runner,” Peterson said. “It’s only his second year running and we’ve seen these dramatic improvements from him. I don’t know if it’s expectation, but there’s certainly anticipation for another pretty dramatic jump during his junior year.”

The coach estimated Catron has doubled the number of miles he runs per week, covering those miles at a faster speed. But the biggest adjustment is perhaps the mental shift — a willingness to go all out and trust you can keep that pace through the race.

That mental shift came not only from an athlete genuinely growing and evolving. It was part of Catron developing the confidence he lacked coming into high school. And he didn’t do that alone, either. The sophomore said his coaches, Peterson and track coach Peter Hessler have pushed him to “go faster (and) pass more people.”

He also pointed to Natasha and Ariel Hessler as mentors in the sport. The twin sisters and longtime runners are among the best in the state and Catron said they offered guidance while also pushing him to keep up.

It’s part of a broader dynamic between the genders for Ridgway. While the boys’ team doesn’t field enough runners to score points in the team standings and almost certainly won’t have the impact of their female counterparts at state, the girls have paved the way for athletes like Catron to grow the boys’ team.

“The girls have shown them what’s possible,” Peterson said. “We’re going to be the smallest school competing at just about every meet. What the girls have shown is that it doesn’t matter the size of the school — you can go anywhere and be really good as a runner. It can be 10 kids, 20 kids, or 100 kids in a class. You can build that level of success.”

The Demons returned to Delta on Oct. 3, where Catron placed 39th at Pantherfest — a race that consisted mostly of larger schools. Nick Anderson was 86th and Alex Birck placed 100th. The girls were sixth in the team standings, led by Ariel Hessler in seventh.

Area runners will compete in one more regular-season meet — Saturday in Mancos — ahead of any regionals. The state competition is Nov. 1 in Colorado Springs.

Some other local results include:

• Cameron Skoloda was Ouray’s top finisher at Pantherfest, finishing seventh in the girls’ race and clocking a time of 20:03.10.

• Ridgway boys soccer earned its second victory of the season on Sept. 25 with a 4-2 win over Colorado Rocky Mountain School. Freshman Sam Kinne scored twice, while senior Sean Lawler had a goal and two assists.

Matt Meyer is a writer based in Denver 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.