Super Kids

The dog days are meant for chasing down bugs, ice cream trucks and staying outside until the sun sets—-not so much playing Flappy Bird or marathon-ing the Disney Channel.

Whether you’re a five year old or all grown up, this is the time of year to bring your inner rug-rat out of hibernation. To show us the way, we turned to BoCo’s wildest, most imaginative, mountaineering, frog-chasing, puddle-jumping, mini-ranchers and athletes. These kids embody a superhuman appetite for staying active and finding exploits. So as you look to the warmer months, take a cue from munchkins who make adventure a way of life.

JACK

It was pretty easygoing at first—-a gradual elevation gain of 200 feet as he peddled along the kid-friendly course. He kept going, until somewhere along the way at the Elephant Rock Cycling Festival, the terrain became more demanding. Now Jack was pushing up outrageous hills, and across dirt roads that surround Castle Rock, for 27 long miles. “I kept riding and riding, and I stopped and realized I was riding with the 20 mile racers!” says Jack, still surprised. By the end of it, the nine year old was passing up riders over twice his age on a route he hadn’t even trained for.

Such is the life of Jack Ahrens.

Born prematurely at 34 weeks, his parents are pretty certain that it was because their son couldn’t wait any longer to get out and start pursuing adventure—which, they say, is the singular best word to describe him. Since his early entrance, Jack has been encouraging others with his pace through and excitement for life.

Along with his sister, Sydney, and best friend Reed Maiocco, Jack is an avid cyclist and triathlete. To help pay for his black Easton road bike, he raised funds by mowing lawns and walking dogs. Rain or shine, he rides a mile to school and home each day of the year. “Well, when it gets icy it’s not as fun,” he explains. “But when it snows over it’s like I’m biking through deep snow, and that’s really fun,” Ahrens says. He has a mountain bike too, which is “specifically so he can ride in any conditions,” explains Jack’s mom, Rhonda. And she does mean any condition.

Last summer, Jack, Reed, and Sydney found themselves riding in knee-deep water when a river running next to one of their favorite bike paths started to overflow. “The water was up to our knees, touching our handlebars,” Reed explains pantomiming the height with his hand. But they kept riding. The more extreme the condition, the happier Jack is. “It’s good to stay fit,” he encourages, “and push yourself harder.”

All of his cycling helps when he pushes himself in triathlons, as well. Without training, he took first place in his age bracket at the Erie Rec Center Triathlon for kids last August. After two laps of swimming, Jack got out at the transition area and dried off before starting the last phase of running. With two people in front of him, he kept calm and turned any nerves he had into more momentum: “I’m calm [during the race] and I talk to myself while I’m running or biking or swimming,” he says. “I tell myself to go harder.” Not letting the pressure get to him, Jack eventually passed the leaders, and as with his race at Elephant Rock, wound up surprising himself with his own accomplishment.

Sydney, who also raced in the triathlon for the first time, says that trying new activities like that helps her feel better all over. “It’s better for your mind for sure,” she says, “sometimes we might play a video game or something but only on a rainy day.”

“I’d rather go play in the puddles,” laughs Jack.

LILY

The morning of the fair, Lily Kurtz, wakes up early. The ten year old bypasses the shower and breakfast table and heads outside, down the dirt road to her goats. She pulls them out to the pen to be scrubbed down with soap and water. Then, they move on to blow drying, nail clipping, even polishing. Once this is done, Lily in turn readies herself, her mom fixing her hair in elaborate braids. Now, all preparation is complete, the last five months of work at the mercy of one judge.

For the last two years, Lily has been raising two goats each spring and summer to show at the Boulder County Fair with 4H. And though she likes doing other, more typical ten year old-type things—like basketball, volleyball, swinging on her tire swing, swimming in nearby lakes—she stands apart with the intense work of prepping her goats for show.

“If you want to raise goats,” Kurtz says, “it takes a lot of skill because you have to know how to feed them and where the goat parts are.” Lily got her start thanks in part to her grandparents who have a goat farm. She and her older sister Hannah grew up playing at the farm, and it’s how Hannah got inspired to bring the craze to the Kurtz residence—her baby goat, Ruger regularly poses with Lily for pictures.

She begins the gradual training process in March, after picking out her goats. Squee-inducing as they are, earning a goat’s trust is hard. Undaunted, Lily works with them every single day, leading them around their pen and playing with them. “I spend a lot of time outside working with them and running around,” she says. “It helps me with all of my other sports.”

At the fair, Kurtz watches the competition and gauges how the judge is that day. When it’s her turn, she walks her goat around the pen, demonstrating she knows the parts of the goat—like the hawkes (i.e. goat “kneecaps”)—and then repeats this all over again.

Afterwards, contenders line up in order of ranking. Respectively, Lily has taken second and first place both years.

Next, it’s time for sale.

Since Lily raises market goats, they are sold for meat after the judging. “So we fall in love with them and then we have to sell them, and that is the most traumatic day,” tells Lily’s mom, Kelly. As an attempt to help curb some of the heartache, Lily plans to give more impersonal names to her goats this year: Goat A, Goat B, etc. This way, she can focus on “looking really sweet in the sale ring so that people pay a lot of money.”
Confident and poised, Lily exudes a kind of joy all kids deserve. Her secret? Not the ribbons and money, but quality time outside. She’s proof that, as she says, “if you go outside over and over again, you’ll feel like a new person.”

ISABELLA

When you’ve hiked to over 13,000 feet, you’re tired. You’ve completed grueling hours of constant movement. Your feet, legs, back … even your lungs are sore. And the weather has changed at least three times—always teasing with ominous-looking clouds. Now, factor in that you’re barely taller than your hiking sticks.

Meet 5-year-old Isabella Leverone of Firestone. Last summer, she came just shy of summiting her first fourteener: Mt. Sherman. “If I didn’t try, then that wouldn’t be good,” she says, adding with utmost enthusiasm, “This year, I might even get to the top.”

But let’s rewind.

As early as two, Isabella was walking over a mile, ready to explore the world around her. Today, that same energy is still palpable, even when she sits still (which isn’t very often). Bobbing her pigtails around, her hiking sticks become her own version of pogo sticks, as she props herself onto them and jumps high into the air.

These jumping skills spring from the tricks she spends much of her time refining on her trampoline. “I can do on-offs,” she boasts, “where you jump on the trampoline and then sit back on the floor of it and then jump back onto your feet.” I follow her into the backyard to watch her show off her pikes, tucks, headstands, and back flips—she calls out each trick to me as she does them—that she’s obviously mastered from hours of practice. After the initial round of tricks, she sits down to unzip her pants into shorts—“I need to cool off,” she laughs. Then it’s time for the grand finale, for which she’s saved her favorite trick on the tramp: popcorn. To pull off popcorn, Isabella jumps high a few times until she’s gained enough air to tuck her knees up to her chin mid jump, wrapping her arms around them. Like a ball, she bounces back down and all around, giggling the whole way.

Though she’s an accomplished trampoline jumper, let it be made clear that Isabella’s main activities of choice are hiking and camping.

During summer, Isabella and her family load their gear up and head all over Colorado on hikes and camping trips. With her walking sticks in tow, she puts on her fuchsia-colored Camelbak and zip-off pants—“Daddy has the same ones”—and sets off on trails in Rocky Mountain National Park, Loveland Pass and Heil Ranch outside of Longmont. “When I go hiking I collect stuff like rocks and pinecones, even a jar of sand,” she tells me. They’re all souvenirs from her adventures that she keeps in a plastic Scooby-Doo bucket next to her bed. Taking the different mementos out, she can name nearly all of the places that each item came from. “Bear Mountain,” she recalls as she holds up an otherwise ordinary rock, “I loved it because it was awesome.” For her, these pieces of nature represent a specific day and story.

While the hikes she goes on require a lot of stamina, Isabella doesn’t mind getting up early or putting in long hours. One of her favorite places that her love of the outdoors has taken her, is the Great Sand Dunes (or, as she calls them, Sand Dudes), in southern Colorado. She recalls how hot the sand was there—melting the skin off their feet—and the green sled that her dad brought along to slide down the mountains of sand on. But when you get right down to it, Isabella’s fascination for hiking and camping is quite simple. “I like being outside, I feel healthy,” she plainly states, “And I like s’mores!”

EVAN
After warming up with front flips and cartwheels on the mat, Evan McGrath quickly darts his way up the support beam. It’s clear that he’s already in his element as his tongue hangs out of his mouth. Eyes intense with focus, he grips the crossbar and starts swinging back and forth, slowly gaining the momentum to make one complete rotation.

While bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympics has yet to commence, it’s been on Evan’s radar for a while—his dream fueled by a recent run-in with two male Olympic gymnasts.

By 2024, the, now, nine year old will be eligible to compete in the Olympics—at least in terms of age. And if everything goes according to his plan, McGrath will qualify for the games based on skill, as well. For the last four years, Evan has been a top competitor on his gymnastics team at Xtreme Altitude in Lafayette. Though he competes in all six events, his favorites are the high and parallel bars.

“I like them because you feel like you’re flying,” Evan says, something evident as he practices. But Evan’s active history goes further back than his years on the team. Almost as long as he’s been able to balance on two feet, Evan has been doing handstands across the house, and back flips off the couch. An outlet was needed. So, Shannon McGrath put him in gymnastics … almost on a whim. “Then every time I picked him up from practice, his instructors would tell me he needed to go to the next level,” recalls Shannon. “I always say that gymnastics picked him.”

In the summer, Evan spends 20 hours a week practicing at the gym. And between the hours of weekly practice, and competitions during meet season, his gymnastics schedule can seem like overload for a nine year old. That isn’t how Evan sees it at all, though. In regard to the long hours and hard work, Evan explains that, “you keep getting to do bigger things and learn more skills.”

“He knows this can all evolve into bigger things,” Shannon says. Bouncing in his chair with energy, nodding agreeably, Evan breaks out into a wide grin—2024 will be here before we know it.

THE FALBORN BOYS
Walking into the Falborn’s two adjoining bedrooms, you enter the ultimate childhood sanctuary. Hand-crafted wooden bunk beds climb up one wall, while books, rocks, and specimen boxes fill up the opposite. In front of their windows are tables of morning glory and cacti; even a flower that they’re growing for their mom. The Falborn boys are a reincarnated old west gang (minus the violence and crime). Instead of hunting robber barons and seizing trains, they build forts, raise sheep, and explore the outdoor world around them. Donning cowboy hats and good manners, Wyatt, Satchel, Harrison, and August are as ruggedly charming and well-mannered as Butch Cassidy could ever hope to be.

Aged eight and ten (August, Harrison and Satchel are triplets), the Falborns live and play on 50 acres in west Longmont that used to be part of a Centennial Farm—one that’s been around for 100 years. It’s on this land that they’ve been raising sheep since they were barely out of diapers, to show at the 4H peewee contest. “I still remember what I named my first sheep,” exclaims Harrison. “It was Cutie.”

The long line of trophies tells me how skilled they must be at the role, but their enthusiasm for what they do reveals more. This past year Satchel and Harrison got their chance at delivering sheep for the first time. “We saw their feet showing and then it was very interesting. Our hands were really sweaty,” Satchel recounts like a
seasoned pro.

Out in the field, the boys holler at the sheep and cows the way kids call over to their friends on a playground: “Come here, Sissy!” or “How are you today, Sir Fillet Mignon?” They are in their element with the animals and love them as they do their white Great Pyrenees who happens to live with the sheep and guard against coyotes.

There’s an endless amount of adventure to be had out here, and the Falborns take full advantage of it. “It kind of educates you more to get to do things and learn about things. And the fresh air is good for you,” says Harrison. August adds that “some kids don’t have the chance to [play outside like they do] because they live in an apartment.” Young as they may be, all four boys are keenly aware of their privileges.

They point up to the ridge behind their house where just beyond, are two springs that they spend their summers swimming in and waiting for the chance to catch tadpoles and frogs. “There are peeper frogs and they are really hard to catch,” Wyatt explains. “And in the summer if you go outside and it’s a clear night, you can hear them.” They’ve built a dam in one of the springs, and last year they caught a huge garter snake there. It’s also around this area, and down in what they call Ladybug Field (you can guess why), where the Falborns have built up their stunning rock collections.

Collectively, they’ve accumulated 400 rocks. Ranging from clam shells to wulfenite, they’re all organized across the boys’ desks and arranged according to type. “These are baculites and we find them on our land because it was under water millions of years ago,” Wyatt tells me as he fits two pieces together like a puzzle. It’s here, in their rooms, where they bring back all of their souvenirs from the day’s adventures. And rest among amaryllis, monarchs and origami
masterpieces.

The End