Two years ago, Zona Welling was a middle school soccer player. Now, she is the fastest girl in Colorado.

Welling, a sophomore from Heritage, won both the Class 5A 100- and 200-meter dashes Saturday in the CHSAA state track and field championships at Jeffco Stadium.

She held off Fossil Ridge junior Addyson Smith in a photo finish in the 100. Welling’s time, 11.75 seconds, was a new personal best and the fastest time in the state this season. Valor Christian junior Ellie Londo, who won this race a year ago, finished behind the lead duo but was disqualified.

“I honestly didn’t know who won. It was so close,” Welling said. “I wasn’t sure if I leaned enough, or if she leaned more, or what was going on. Looking up and seeing my name, it felt pretty good. I love racing here.”

Welling caught the running bug before the start of her freshman year. But she was DQ’d last year because of a false start.

The incredible finish to her sophomore season continued in the 200, when she again held off Smith with a personal best time of 23.96 seconds.

“I don’t think it’s fully hit me yet,” Welling said. “This is everything I wanted and more this year. I’m just feeling great right now.”

The girls hurdles crème de la crème. A year after the graduation of Grandview elite hurdler Gabriella Cunningham left a void in the event, Ponderosa senior Payton Becker and Fountain-Fort Carson junior Alexa Queen left no doubt about who the top girls hurdlers in Class 5A are.

Becker, a Wyoming commit, won the 5A 100-meter hurdles in 13.79 seconds, edging Queen, who came in at a personal record 13.99. Then Queen, who remains uncommitted but has the talent to run in college, got Becker back in the 300. Queen ran 41.66 and Becker ran 41.73, both of those marks being PRs. Queen took an early lead in the 300, and Becker closed the gap at the end but couldn’t catch up.

The two hurdlers hugged in a moment of mutual respect following the 300 hurdles.

“I messed up the first half of the (300) race, because I psyched myself out on the first couple hurdles, stuttered and lost a lot of momentum,” Becker said. “The back part of the race, I was playing catch up, but I’m proud of myself for how hard I fought.”

Queen said, “not winning in the 100 hurdles motivated me to come back and get (the 300).”

“This is my last race today, and I was going to empty the tank,” Queen said. “I knew it was going to hurt no matter what when I finished, so I might as well be proud of myself afterwards.”

In the Class 4A 300-meter race, Niwot senior Reese Casper set the standard for Colorado this year with a 41.35 to win the title by over a second over runner-up Reagan Falletta of Pueblo East. The Kansas State commit also won the 4A 100-meter hurdles in 14.22.

Another triple sweep for 1A star: Even when she can’t stop winning, Roxy Unruh finds some nits to pick.

Unruh, a junior from Cheyenne Wells, romped through the girls Class 1A 100, 200 and 400 meters finals Saturday. She set a new 1A meet record in the 200 and 400, breaking … her marks from last year.

But there was that pesky 100.

“There’s always something you can always improve on, right?” Unruh said. “I was really proud of my start. It was beautiful, honestly. But I was so happy with my start, I forgot my second zone of acceleration.”

Still, Unruh is now a three-time state champion in the 100 and 400, with two more individual titles in the 200. And she’s got another year to continue collecting medals and continue to improve her record-setting times.

“This year, I got a lot better mentally, not even the conditioning,” Unruh said. “Once you learn how to run the races the right way, it is life-changing.”

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Gov. Jared Polis on Friday vetoed a bill that would have mandated Colorado’s municipal courts conform to state sentencing guidelines.

The governor, in a letter released Friday afternoon, said House Bill 1147’s sponsors had good intentions, but the legislation would have restricted municipalities’ ability to react to local crime trends in a manner they see fit.

“It is not in the interest of increasing public safety to constrain a municipality’s ability to set appropriate sentences for crimes within their borders,” he wrote. “Criminal justice and public safety issues are a shared concern among state and local lawmakers, and municipalities must have the ability to adopt laws to increase public safety based on the public safety challenges on the ground in each community.”

The legislation would have barred city courts from handing out sentences that exceed state limits for the same crimes. The legislature in 2021 significantly reduced penalties for low-level, nonviolent crimes in Colorado’s state courts. However, municipal courts, which operate individually and are not part of the state judicial system, were not included in the statute.

As a result, defendants in Colorado’s municipal courts can face much longer sentences than those in state court for the same petty offenses, The Denver Post previously found.

Polis said he supported two of the provisions in 1147: language clarifying that a defendant in municipal court has the right to counsel, and making clear that proceedings should be open to the public. He said he would support a narrower bill addressing those topics, or one tailored to addressing specific crimes where penalties between the state and local criminal codes are “far out of balance.”

Bill sponsors Reps. Javier Mabrey and Elizabeth Velasco and Sens. Judy Amabile and Mike Weissman, all Democrats, were alerted in April to the potential Polis veto.

“It’s incredibly disappointing that we’re doubling down on a broken status quo, where we have two systems of justice operating side by side,” Mabrey said Friday in an interview. “We will allow someone to go to jail and face vastly different sentences — to me, that flies in the face of the idea that we should have equal protection under the law.”

“This is wrong constitutionally, wrong morally, and it’s wrong as an approach to public safety,” he said.

Cities vehemently opposed the bill, saying the changes would encroach on their ability to deal with crimes specific to their areas. The Colorado Constitution, they argued, allows for home rule, meaning cities have the freedom to legislate on matters of local concern.

The mayors of Colorado’s three largest cities — Denver, Aurora and Colorado Springs — asked Polis in a letter to veto the legislation.

The Colorado Supreme Court this week heard oral arguments on two cases that touch on the sentence disparity issue. In those cases, arresting officers could have sent the individuals to state court for minor infractions, but elected to send both to municipal court, where they faced exponentially longer potential jail sentences.

Their attorneys argued this violates their equal protection under the Colorado Constitution.

A ruling, which won’t come for a few months, could have wide-ranging impacts on municipal codes throughout the state. Polis, in his veto letter, said he would like to see how the court rules before changing the law.

The governor, in April, did sign a separate bill into law that prohibits cities from criminalizing the failure to appear for a court hearing.

SB62, sponsored by Sens. Nick Hinrichsen and Mike Weissman and Reps. Michael Carter and Lindsay Gilchrist, all Democrats, came after a Denver Post investigation found Pueblo municipal judges were regularly using contempt of court charges to punish people for skipping court proceedings.

These charges — in some cases dozens of them — inflated sentences for defendants who otherwise faced little to no jail time on minor city offenses like loitering, trespassing and shoplifting, The Post found. Pueblo city judges sent people to jail for months on charges that in other Colorado courts are punished by one or two days in jail, if that.

A district court judge in Pueblo in January ruled that that practice was unconstitutional and released several people from jail.

Polis on Friday also vetoed a bill that would have allowed those 72 years or older to choose to temporarily or permanently opt out of jury service. The governor noted that between 2025 and 2050, the population of Coloradans in that demographic is expected to grow significantly. Plus, he added, a “jury of one’s peers means representation from all age groups.”

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Originally Published: May 16, 2025 at 3:41 PM MDT