Delaney Reuter blew her shot but kept the bullet.
The shell, technically. Instead of a medal from the 2025 CHSAA Class 3A girls 3,200-meter state championship, Reuter’s keeping a piece of the bullet fired from that race’s starting gun.
Not as a trophy. As a memento. A reminder. Pain is temporary. Class is forever.
“Oh, I will remember (this weekend),” Reuter told me after winning the 3A girls 1,600 on Saturday at Jeffco Stadium, “for a long time.”
A winner’s medal and a bullet shell should’ve been two medals, of course. The Eaton sophomore had cruised to a first-place finish in the 3A girls 3,200 final on Friday. Or so she thought.
Race officials disqualified five finishers, including Reuter, for cutting from the outside too early. Because the quintet veered into Lane 4 at Jeffco instead of Lane 5, CHSAA decreed Alamosa senior Elizabeth McQuitty to be the state champ.
Suddenly, in one of the strangest and most awesome displays in recent state track history, this giant bottleneck formed on the high road.
Instead of pitching a fit, Reuter immediately admitted fault and coolly shrugged it off.
Instead of celebrating a gift by technicality, McQuitty offered to give Reuter her winner’s medal.
Delaney declined.
“(Reuter) has amazing sportsmanship and incredible courage,” McQuitty, who finished sixth in the 1,600, well back of Reuter’s winning time of 4:59.18, said Saturday.
“She got back up and competed so well in her other events. I’m just very inspired by her.”
Back at ya, ma’am. Right back at ya.
“She deserves that medal,” Reuter continued. “The way I look at it is, how I can’t say anything if it was my fault. I didn’t listen. It wasn’t the officials who messed up. It was my mistake. I have to own that.”
Who offers to give back a state championship medal? More to the point, who raises a kid who willingly offers to give back a state championship medal?
“My husband, my other daughter and I were standing at the finish line (Friday),” Jennifer McQuitty, Elizabeth’s mom and her track coach at Alamosa, told me. “And right away we said, ‘She’s going to give the medal to Delaney.’
“She’s got this heart of gold. She’s always had it since she was 3 years old. She never thinks of herself.”
Jennifer said that Delaney’s dad introduced himself after the 3,200 and came over to pray with them. Reuter’s mom fired off an email of thanks. Both sets of Delaney’s grandparents made a point to seek out Elizabeth on Friday to personally show their appreciation.
“You’re running out of Reuters,” I told Jennifer.
“And I have them in my phone now,” she laughed.
“They’re going to follow Elizabeth when she competes at CU Colorado Springs next fall. And I’ll be sending them text messages when Delaney’s in college. And I do that with my parents on my team, so now I’ve got other people. And it’s just amazing.”
Lose a race, gain a friend.
“The medals are great,” Elizabeth said, “but it’s just the memories that were made from them, they’re so much better.”
Somehow, the McQuittys and Reuters just podiumed at life, too.
“(Elizabeth) doesn’t think she deserves that (medal),” Jennifer continued. “And I said, ‘Honey, it’s a win. You take it with appreciation and gratitude. And the way that you handled yourself, that’s the bigger win. Because I don’t care about titles or medals or anything. What you did up there, that’s what encompasses our sport. And track and field.’”
Reuter, a rising star in Colorado prep distance running, took a little longer to get rolling in the 1,600 on Saturday. Yet by the third lap of four around the track, she’d built up a cushion of at least 8 yards past The Classical Academy’s Vivian Jack and Coal Ridge’s Effie Fletcher. At the closing kick, that gap looked closer to 10 yards.
“The officials in the green, when they brought us out on the field (for the 1,600), they’re all like, ‘OK, so make sure to stay in your (assigned) alleys,’” Reuter recalled. “‘Stay in those alleys until the cut line.’ And then, like, the official (working) the top said, ‘OK, Lane 9, it’s like a wall. Don’t cross that until you get to the cut line.’”
Delaney didn’t.
Fool me once …
“I was like, ‘Yes, I’m sorry, guys. Sorry that you have to give this speech now,’” Reuter chuckled.
She got the point.
“And when (Delaney) took off, that was it,” Elizabeth said. “She’s an incredible runner. When she (took) off, I’m like, ‘Oh yeah, girl.’”
Elizabeth didn’t just offer to give Reuter her medal. She offered to share her Normatec leg sleeves for Reuter to use before the latter competed in the 800.
Reuter politely declined that, too.
“God,” Jennifer said with a smile, “puts people in your lives for a reason.”
Darn straight. And when it comes to the right thing, don’t ever be afraid to veer outside your lane.
Originally Published: May 17, 2025 at 7:27 PM MDT
