It's been a while since I have last wrote, but here we are with the state series having just started. It is almost hard to believe that the season is coming to a close already. It has surely been a great season for all the runners of Florida, and I bet everyone is excited to run these next couple weeks in order to reach the ultimate goal of participating in the state championship. A quick recap over the last few weeks has included Pre-States, the Metro East Conference Championship, and Districts.
Starting with Pre-States, I bet most of the flrunners community already know how the all the races panned out, especially the Elite races. In retrospect, I am very pleased for setting a new PR and collectively as a team where Timber Creek finished 9th overall in the Elite race. Six of our top eight PR'd! That is leaps and bounds from where we finished last year, in 23rd. Our girls team also fared well with an impressive showing in the Select race. A huge, well deserved, shout out goes to my teammate Carlos Ramos, who ran a massive 15:47 PR that race, and to Sukhi Khosla for breaking 15 in that race too, that is truly a remarkable accomplishment. To sum Pre-States up, a beautiful, fast course with heavy competition really set it up perfectly for fast times across the board.
A week ago, the Metro East conference championship was scheduled for us to compete in. After a tough race the week prior, my coaches and I decided to rest me this week in preparation for the state series after. I still made it out to Lake Nona with the team early to cheer them on and play the "Junior" Coach role. It was a warm day for cross country but everyone seemed ready to run. Even though Timber Creek is a fairly new school (est. 2001), both the girls and boys teams made school history. The girls started the day with a runner-up finish to 4A favorite Winter Park, highest ever for the TC girls team, lead by Briana Burnett who finished fourth overall. The guys pulled off an impressive victory over defending Metro/State Champs Colonial and 4A #9 Winter Park to take the Metro East title! With Connor Ferrentino taking the individual title for Freedom, Timber Creek went 2-3 with Michael Nazareth and Carlos Ramos to set the tone for the rest of the team and our usual #6, Juan Jared Tavarez, ran an solid race to close it for us at #5.
This past weekend, the start of the state series began with everyone across the state participating in Districts. Timber Creek's district meet (4A-4) was out in Blue Jacket Park in Winter Park this past Friday. With the cooler temperatures settling in, the morning conditions were perfect. The girls race started out with Winter Park dominating the team contest taking the District Champion trophy home with a mere 24 points, led by Katherine Kuhn. The other regional qualifiers included Dr. Phillips, Timber Creek, and Boone. Our girls were led by freshman Briana Burnett, who broke the school record in this race by running 19:10 to take fifth.
In the boy's race, the pace was conservative from the gun and in a close team battle, Timber Creek edged out Colonial by ONE point to secure our first district championship in our school's brief history. Michael Nazareth (16:03/3rd) and Matt Nazareth (16:58/18th) both PR'd to help our team seal the deal. The other regional qualifiers included Winter Park and Dr. Phillips.
I am looking forward to running regional's next and running these last few races with the teammates to close out the year. Crazy how sophomore year is flying by. Till next time.
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