Park City High girls cross country claims first state championship in years

Athletes and coaches of the Park City High School Cross Country Running Team on top of the State Championships podium for their first time. Photo: courtesy of Steve Cuttitta

SALT LAKE CITY — For the first time, the Park City High School Cross Country team won the Utah state championship title for 4A on Tuesday at Sugarhouse Park in Salt Lake City.

“They’ve never won before, they’ve never been close,” said Steve Cuttitta, the 17-year head coach who also is an English teacher at the school. “They were ninth last year, to see them work so hard, and for them to have that moment on the top of the podium was very special.”

“We couldn’t have asked for more from this team,” Cuttitta said. “The girls went in to this competition with with high expectations, they knew they had a chance to win, but you still have to perform on the day, and you have to run your best race. It came down to the wire, we won by only four points. We didn’t have the lead in the race until the very end of the race. A couple all of our girls made a couple passes late in the last, literally, few 100 meters of the race and that made the difference.”

The girls and boys both run the same 3-mile course. Below is a video of a portion of the race.

No one knew the girls had won immediately after the race ended and had to wait for the results to be tallied. Park City appeared to be in second place for several minutes before the final results were announced.

“It was a moment of euphoria for everybody as there were yells and cheers and tears, and it was fantastic, one of the one of the best State moments I’ve had,” Cuttitta said.

Cuttitta was joined on his assistant coaching staff this year by Park City’s Jared Shumate, a retired Olympic nordic combined winter athlete who Cuttitta said has the best training and competing tips and is an invaluable role model for the student-athletes. Additionally, four women whom Cuttitta credits for the win as his “secret weapons” also served as assistants: Liis Rametta, Nikki Dotter, Natalie Como and Tiffany Shewell.

Three-time Winter Olympic cross-country ski racer Liz Stephen coaches for the Park City Nordic Ski Team, which includes now-state champion runners Rhys Weidenhamer and Phoebe Zaniello, as well as Cuttitta’s own daughter, Savannah, a nordic combined athlete who is not yet in high school. Stephen drove the team van from Park City packed with student-athletes to cheer on the runners, while the high school drove a bus with 30 more student spectators.

The senior girls on the winning team are Sonja Preston, Paige Wagner, Lilly Vatkeman, Tatum Flach — who posted the fastest time among the Miners girls, crossing the finish line in 17 minutes, 51.3 seconds — and Ava Shewell, daughter of assistant coach Tiffany.

The four female coaches were all busy, Cuttitta explained.

“Two of them had literally just had babies, and so they were at practice when they were pregnant and with newborns,” he said. “We had Liis, who was training for the Iron Man Triathlon in Hawaii, and we had Tiffany, who was just here every single day supporting and empowering the team.”

The Miners boys team, which includes two seniors, finished 14th out of 24 at the final meet. Last year, the boys were 16th at state. Those seniors are Logan Kraner and Ryland Betker. Cuttitta was pleased with the boys’ performance considering the competitive field.

“This was a good race for the boys, they all ran really well,” Cuttitta said. “They ran their best race of the season as a team, our best average time. And they got to see the girls win so I think that can be very inspirational as they can come back next year and be like, ‘hey, you know, the girls did it, we know the training works, it may not necessarily have been our turn then, however, we just need to buckle down and train and it could be our turn now.'”