EDITOR’S NOTE: John Stroud is a Roaring Fork High School track and field coach and a substitute teacher at Roaring Fork School District schools. 

Roaring Fork High School’s boys soccer team stands at 4 wins, 2 losses on the young season with the 3A Western Slope League slate of games looming on the near horizon.

The latest win came in shutout fashion Tuesday over the Rams’ crosstown neighbors, the Colorado Rocky Mountain School Oysters, by a mercy rule score of 10-nil.

The Rams unloaded a string of goals early in the game, including a hat trick by senior Oliver Shook, allowing head coach Nick Forbes to sub in some of his younger players to develop some bench strength as the season winds toward those all-
important conference matchups.

Additional goals came from Michael Parada, Kevin Morales, Cristian Tucios, Jerry Marin-
Trinidad, Inmar Gutierrez, Noe Alvarez-Tellez and Max Loya.

The win came on the heels of a Sept. 12 loss on the road at 4A Montrose, in which Forbes said the team looked a little flat, giving up an early goal and failing to get much going in the way of any offensive pushes. 

“I think you saw some of that frustration out there today, where they were knocking the ball around and finishing, and just kind of putting people to the sword,” Forbes said. “CRMS is a good team, but I think we just came to play after that loss.”

The season to date has seen the Rams score some solid wins, including a 7-1 rout of a decent Telluride team that came back the next day (Sept. 29) to down one of the Rams’ 3A league opponents, Coal Ridge, 5-2. Roaring Fork downed Glenwood Springs 3-0 that same day.

“A lot of these kids have been starting for four years, but we also have a lot of really good freshmen and other fringe players, and I think going forward I just need to lean into them a little bit more and use my bench better,” Forbes said. “I love this team, and I’m having a great time with them.” 

Following a trip to play Steamboat Springs this Saturday, the Rams open the league season on a homecoming date with Aspen on Thursday, Sept. 24, at Rams Field. Varsity game time is 6pm under the lights. 

Girls volleyball
Meanwhile, the Roaring Fork volleyball team picked up a 3-1 win (23-25, 25-17, 25-13, 25-22) at Moffat County on Sept. 12 to score their first 3A WSL victory and improve to 3-8 overall and 1-3 in league play.

The win came after a string of 3-0 losses for the Lady Rams to Aspen, Glenwood Springs and
Coal Ridge.

Next up, Roaring Fork is at Gunnison on Thursday night, and plays host to Delta for their homecoming week game on Tuesday, Sept. 22 (varsity at 6pm). 

Boys golf
Roaring Fork golfer Hudson Arnold, who plays for the Basalt Longhorns boys golf team, continues to dominate the competition, taking first place in two tournaments this past week, the Summit and Moffat County invitationals.

Mountain biking
Boys and girls teams from both Roaring Fork High School and CRMS competed at the Haymaker Classic in Eagle last weekend.

Top performances for the Rams came from Sophia Warner, sixth in the JV girls race, Maggie Cole, sixth in the sophomore girls race, and Samuel Brown, ninth in the sophomore boys race.

And, for CRMS, Drew O’Keefe won the varsity boys race and Bram Marlow was seventh, while Finley Nolan took 10th in the varsity girls race.