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Meet. She won the 50,100/ 220 yard dash and long jump. Coach Jim Ciccarello says Boyer- Wells is one of the finest athletes he's ever coached. Despite long hours of training, Val graduated in the top 20% of her MHS class. She held the records for 50,100,220, and 440 yard dash (before events changed to meters.)

In 1977, she qualified for the USA Track Team. At the Richmond, VA meet she broke the junior world 100 meter Record (11.38 seconds). She also ran the winning 400 meter relay team and was honored as the most outstanding athlete in USA/USSR Jr. Dual Track meet. In 1978 she ran the anchor leg for USA 4x100 meter relay team at the World Cup Championship. In 1976 and 1980 she qualified for the Olympic Trials. At Arizona State University she was an All American 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980. Her 4X100 meter relay, at Arizona State won the National Championship.

Valerye, her husband and their four children live in Paradise Valley Arizona. She returns to Albuquerque often to visit her mother, several sisters, and other relatives.

"The state track meet is the epitome -- if you can win there, that's what it's all about," he said. "The state meet is always something special."

The exact times and finishes at state, though important then, have faded from his memory.

A 1977 graduate of Los Lunas High School, Aragon pondered what happened almost 30 years ago.

"In cross country I was second as a sophomore, first as a junior and again as a senior. When I came in second, a Shiprock kid nipped me at the tape; I remember him saying, 'I had to do it, I'm a senior,'" Aragon recalled.

At the state track meets, he said, searching his memory banks, "As a freshman I was second in 1:59 at Hobbs (in the 880). As a sophomore, I was second to a kid named Vega of St. Michael's. As a junior, I ran the mile and two-mile, I was like second and third. As a senior I won the 880."

The Tigers' mile relay team's efforts in 1977 have stuck with him: "We broke the state record in the semifinals; we beat Belen. It seemed it was always us and Belen. We always seemed to beat them but it was just by inches at the tape. (Then) in the finals they beat us and broke the state record -- we were second."

His success continued with the Fighting Irish.

"I was an All-American in the 1,500 and 4x800 relay ... I was the team captain for two years; I broke the Notre Dame mile record. I was the first to run under 4:00; (my record) was broken just last year.

Aragon doesn't run competitively anymore; the Track & Field News Web site shows Aragon still running sub-3:46 times for 1,500 meters in the U.S. Nationals in 1982-83, '85-87, when his time of 3:45.06 left him in fourth place, tying his personal best of fourth in 1985, when he turned in a time of 3:39.89. Of course, those were his pre- and post-Olympic trials days.

Today, Aragon says he jogs and rides his bike. "Fishing is one of my passions," he added.

How'd he end up in 'Big Sky Country' in Billings?

"I did my internship in Michigan, and my anesthesiology residency in Vermont," he explained. "I wanted to come back West, but there wasn't a job for me in New Mexico. There was a job in Billings; we said we'd spend a year or two and come back."

It didn't happen.

He and his wife Kathy (Pfeifer), a former runner for the UNM track team, met at the Olympic Sport festival in Syracuse, Aragon said.

"I have three passions -- they run and we're just excited," he said. The couple have a first-, fifth- and a seventh-grader and, Aragon happily noted, "Our seventh grader won the city cross country meet."

Aragon said he had some advice for anyone reading this article, especially high school athletes.

"Of all the things we do, athletics and track meets and the pressure we feel to succeed in athletics -- in dealing with that pressure -- all that really plays into being a success in life," he said. "(Those lessons) are the same; I draw from those experiences every day."

Even in the medical profession, he said, "As a physician, in a situation demanding the most out of myself, it's a very familiar feeling -- the same feeling I got at the state track meet and had to perform, had to do the things I had to do. The stakes are different but it's the same type of practice you develop in high school athletics and intercollegiate athletics that mean more when you move on in life.

"I go into the operating room and I know, 'Hey, 'i've got to perform -- do the very best I can do.'

"That's the lesson -- this all means something. It all leads to the kind of person we come out in the end; it all seems to make the person we are," he concluded. "I welcome the feeling; I understand I'm going to have to be at my best today -- I like that."

Legends of The Race- Tony Sandoval (Los Alamos)

By James Yodice

Anthony Sandoval's love affair with running is, in part, due to his genetics.

Too slight to play basketball, he said. Not enough bulk to play football.

But perfectly proportioned to run.

"It was just a circumstance of the right thing at the right time," Sandoval says. "I was very small. So a friend and I decided to try cross country."

And so began one of the most accomplished running careers in the state's history. The 1972 graduate of Los Alamos High School remains one of the great distance runners New Mexico has ever known. To many he's at the top of the list (a list that could someday include Eldorado's Matt Tebo, who this year is going after another Class 5A championship).

But it was the summer of 1980 that, fair or unfair, probably defined his running career.

Sandoval had won the U.S. Olympic Marathon trial in Buffalo, N.Y., leading up to the 1980 Summer Games in Moscow. But the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan led then-President Jimmy Carter to boycott those Olympics. Sandoval, who was considered one of the favorites to capture the gold medal, never got a chance to compete.

He was asked how his life might have been different had the U.S. attended those Olympics and he won a medal.

"I think had I had that opportunity, I would have been successful," he says. "That itself would have catapulted me into much more aggressive, full-time running. Had I done it for an Olympiad, it would have been an extra special part of my life."

Sandoval entered medical school in Colorado in the late 1970s.

For many years, he continued to balance his love of medicine with his passion for running. Sandoval was an Olympic alternate in 1976 (Montreal) and 1984 (Los Angeles), and attended five Olympic Marathon trials in all. He also tried to qualify for the U.S. marathon team in 1988 (Seoul, South Korea) and 1992 (Barcelona, Spain).

At the 1992 Olympic trial, Sandoval suffered a serious achilles tendon injury and didn't finish the race. And, until December of 2004, when he competed in the Masters (50-54) division of the national cross country championships in Portland, Ore. -- where he borrowed the shoes of one of his four daughters who was also a participant at that event -- he said he hadn't run in a major race since that 1992 Olympic qualifier.

While competing has not been a constant for Sandoval in recent years, medicine has.

Sandoval, now 52, is a cardiologist in Los Alamos and is part of a large cardiologist group in New Mexico. His medical practice is thriving.

The Truchas native still runs, but only recreationally.

"I think running is probably one of the central lifestyle factors that keeps me happy," he says. "I use it as a healthy aspect of my life, and it's something I enjoy participating in and sharing with anyone and everyone that's interested."

That includes the six children he and his wife of 28 years, Mary, have raised. The oldest, Magdalena, 24, is a graduate student at the University of New Mexico. Marisa, 19, runs cross country and track at Washington State. Analisa, 18, is a freshman runner at Notre Dame. Miguel, 22, ran and bicycled for UC-Davis. Benigno, 15, is a sophomore at Los Alamos High School. Teresa, 11, is in the sixth grade.

They're all distance runners -- everyone except Benigno, who is a sprinter.

"It leads to a lot of good conversations in our family," Sandoval says with a laugh.

The common bond the Sandovals share has proven to be quite enjoyable, says the patriarch.

"For example," he says, "this summer, all the kids came home from college. They ask, `What are we doing in terms of a morning run?' We all anticipate it, six Sandovals going down one of the Bandelier trails."

Sandoval says his December '05 race got the competitive juices flowing again.

"Felt great," he says. "After (all these years), sliding into the draft, the slip stream of the next runner, that just came naturally, like a reflex."

Aside from being unable to run in an Olympics, Sandoval says he doesn't have any regrets. In fact, he adds, he's doing exactly what he should be doing. Ironically enough, his fascination with running was, indirectly, part of the reason he wanted to become a doctor.

"In the end," Sandoval says, "I would have ended up in medicine just like I have."