Coronado cross country coach Doug Hugill knew Dusty Solis would become a special runner when he won the Colorado Springs Metro League Championship two years ago.

Thousands of training miles later, Solis has proven himself to be an elite runner.

“Dusty’s the real deal. He’s one of the best runners in the western United States,” Hugill said.

Solis has won the Class 5A Metro League title three years in a row and is looking to improve his seventh-place finish at the state meet next week at Fossil Ridge High School in Fort Collins.

He began the final leg of that journey on Thursday at the Class 5A regional meet at Monument Valley Park. Solis placed first, charging across the finish line in 16 minutes, 18 seconds. Coronado won the boys’ team title.

“For cross country, every off-season we have this thing called the 500-mile club, and I’ve done that every year since the summer of my freshman year,” Solis said. “I’m in the 2,000-mile club right now.”

Solis has set the bar high and does what is necessary to achieve his goals.

“I just like to do good,” he said. “In cross country, I like to win.”

He gets extra motivation from his mother, who is single and works two jobs.

“She’s an inspiration,” he said.

His teammate, freshman Dan Egger, said Solis is the inspiration.

“We have a Cougars running web site, and there’s one picture of him coming into the finish chute with a great face of determination,” Egger said. “It’s inspiring to see how hard he’s going even though he could just walk and still win, and it wasn’t even the biggest race of the season.”

Hugill will brag about him all day to anyone who will listen.

“Sundays he’ll go out and run 10, 14 miles with a couple of our alumni,” Hugill said. “I’ve never told him (to run on Sundays), he’s found those guys, and he’s hooked up with them. It’s just a great thing, the way he’s proactive about his training.”

His training has helped him clock some quick times. His personal best in the 5K is 15:32. He runs the 800-meter dash for the Cougar track team and holds the school record with a time of 1:56.77. He placed fourth at state in the 800 last season, clocking a 1:57.10.

“(Last winter) he ran 500 miles in the off-season while he was wrestling and maintained incredibly good grades,” said Hugill. “There’s nobody who has a better work ethic, nobody.”

Solis works hard in the classroom, too. He carries a 3.8 GPA.

“He has outstanding grades. He’s in the honor roll all the time. He’s one of the tops in his class. He gets to school almost every day at about 6:30 in the morning and studies for an hour before school,” Hugill said. “He’s looking at a college like Princeton or Yale.”

Solis hopes to continue his running career once he selects a college.

“I’m looking for colleges right now, and I plan to run at college,” Solis said. “I want to run cross country, and I’m going to try and go for some kind of engineering.”

He said he hadn’t visited any colleges, yet, but will likely look out of state.

These aspirations, accompanied by his work ethic, amount to no small gain for one lucky college.

“Whoever gets him is going to get an outstanding kid, no joke,” said Hugill. “He’ll do well academically, and he’ll do well athletically.”