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LAKEWOOD – Not only Taylor James March to the beat of their own drum. She’s running towards it, man. Every chance she gets.
“She loves Joy Division very much,” said Niwot track star’s father Randy on Saturday as her daughter cleaned up at the CHSAA State Athletics Championships at Jeffco Stadium.
“It goes way back. She uses it a little to cheer her up. And it’s neat. It’s something you and I can share. Your mother shakes her head every now and then. “
Like mothers do when they catch a teen jamming to ’80s British rockers like Ultravox in 2021. Or to “Blue Monday†by New Order, Taylor’s pre-race jam of choice.
Good song. No track song.
“But it gets me into the zone,” the senior and Stanford commit said with a laugh after adding three more state titles to a resume on Saturday that now contains 10 titles recorded since 2018. “Just the drums. Even though it’s 8 minutes long. Or Depeche mode. Just all that dark-wave stuff.”
Hey whatever works.
With a strong final kick, James drove past Mullen’s Kaleah Ruff on Saturday, 24.61 seconds to 24.83 to win the class 4A girls over 200 meters.
Earlier in the day, Niwot Senior passed Chelsie Emmerson of Standley Lake in the 400 meters, 54.69 to 57.93. James also ran the anchor phase of Niwot’s victorious 4-by-100 season.
“I was a little nervous when I got off the 400,” James admitted. “Fortunately, I was able to stay calm, stay focused and concentrate on the mantra.”
Which is?
“‘Your race, your space.'”
Your race, your space was a line from a Baylor runner that Taylor and Randy heard during an interview. You loved it. I accepted it.
“I said, ‘This is a good thing to keep in mind,'” said the younger James.
The track at Jeffco and its red brick tones will stay with her now that you mention it. Forever. James and the Niwot girls romped around on Saturday thanks to a whopping 183 points for the 4A team title in 2021 – 135 more than the 48 runner-up by Mullen.
It was the Cougars’ fifth national team title since 2010 and their second in the last two year-round cycles of the CHSAA. Niwot also won the 2019 crown, but the coronavirus pandemic forced the 2020 state championships to be canceled.
So yes.
She will miss this place.
“When you’re on the home stretch, you can barely hear your own breath,” said Taylor. “But that’s fine because that distracts me a little from the pain you’re going through, right?
“Yeah, it’s just the atmosphere. The running community. The fact that I hear my teammates a little louder than anyone else. It fills my bucket. “
Without the pandemic, James might have filled her trophy case with 14 or 15 CHSAA crowns. Damn it, maybe more.
The senior Niwot said she spent the spring of 2020 without a state title “just to focus on things besides athletics that had always been my main focus. When that was gone, I had to try to find other things to take away my energy and focus. Family. School. I started off with photography briefly. And (played) a lot of video games. “
She also played a lot of tracks. You see, Randy used to run a record store, which meant the James family’s music library was eclectic, with almost every genre and media available.
Unfortunately, Randy said the family would be moving to Arizona soon since Taylor is now in college. Which made Dad get rid of six boxes of LPs and three more cases of CDs. He gave Taylor the first try at picking her favorites before deciding to donate the rest.
“She took pictures of them and asked questions,†recalls Randy. “Then she took out about 25 of them and hid them in her closet. Image discs. John Foxx. Ultravox. “
Hey, once you start riding a dark wave, you let yourself be carried all the way to the top.
“I’m so grateful for some of the awards I’ve received over the years,” said James. “But I really want to be remembered as a great team leader.
“Ultimately, Niwot is a family. It is my second family. Everyone on the team feels that way. So I really hope that I made her proud. “
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