About to pass the baton.
 
But not done yet.
 
Donning the bib at the Tritonman Triathlon in San Diego, California, for the last time as a collegian, Lopes' Head Coach Stephen Garr hit the tape for a pair of top-10 finishes over two days, then beamed as his young charges for Grand Canyon University Club Triathlon represented the team well with impressive times. Six other Lopes – including four that were racing in a triathlon for the first time – took part, with pure freshman Nicole Smith placing in the top 35 of her age group. The seven were among 421 competitors that took advantage of ideal weather conditions in southern California to participate.
 
"Everyone did amazing. With some newcomers, seeing them perform well was cool for me to see. Since I had to focus on my race a lot, it was great to see them excel with what we'd worked on," said Garr, whose hamstring sent him to the sidelines for last year's race. In a triathlon, there's so much room for things to co go wrong and everything seemed to go well for everyone, which in itself is a victory."
 
To take advantage of his final trek to SoCal, Garr arrived a day earlier than the team to participate in Saturday's Draft Legal race, and finished just 74 seconds out of the top spot, and all of 18 seconds away from finishing 2^nd with a final time of 58 minutes, 19 seconds. With less than 24 hours to recharge, Garr galvanized his teammates, then led the charge en route to a 9^th-place finish in the Collegiate Male Division and a 10^th-place finish overall with a time of 1:02:03. It's the 2^nd time in his three years in the event to finish 10^th or better.
 
Meanwhile, Smith – a local product from Rio Verde – has impressed Garr ever since she signed up, and displayed plenty of maturity in La Jolla. The first-time participant finished just 30 seconds outside of the overall top 150 racers, using a powerful sub-20 minute run to hit the tape with an overall time of 1:19:52, which placed her 35^th among collegiate females. Fellow newcomer Elijah Alexander and 2^nd-time participant David Weide weren't far behind Smith, finishing with 19 seconds of each and finishing 117^th and 119^th, respectively, in the Collegiate Male Category, with Weide slicing a full two minutes off his Tritonman time of a year ago. Not to be outdone, the newest member of the team, Allie Grange (who didn't even sign on until January), set a high bar for the future by finishing with a time of 1:25:28, which placed her in top half of the 150+-plus females in the race and 63^rd in the Collegiate Female category.
 
"Nicole's 5K in this race was a personal record – dating all the way to her cross country running in high school," said Garr. "She wasn't the only one to set a new PR for herself. Seeing results like that show that our training has paid off and our athletes are improving. For me, I take great pride in that – as much or more as my own racing prep."
 
The Lopes' full results from the Tritonman Triathlon are below:

NAME	TIME	DIVISION	AGE GROUP FINISH	OVERALL FINISH
SATURDAY: DRAFT LEGAL
Stephen Garr	0:58:19		2nd	4th
SUNDAY: CLASSIC
Stephen Garr	1:02:03	Collegiate Male	9th	10th
Nicole Smith	1:19:52	Collegiate Female	35th	158th
Elijah Alexander	1:23:21	Collegiate Male	117th	203rd
David Weide	1:23:40	Collegiate Male	119th	208th
Allie Grange	1:25:28	Collegiate Female	63rd	227th
Joseph Dabisch	1:30:20	Collegiate Male	137th	273th
Zoe Burton	1:36:19	Collegiate Female	92nd	308th