Kayla Hale, Kyle Cooke Win at Astronaut

Kayla Hale and Kyle Cooke, both of Holy Trinity, take home the boys and girls varsity individual titles today at the Astronaut Invitational.   Miami Columbus boys and Holy Trinity girls won the team titles.

JV Race Video coming. Photos coming Sunday/Monday.

Girls Race Summary

The leaders stayed bunched up through the mile mark. While the leaders in the end had already asserted themselves there was not much separation. Kayla Hale seemed a little nervous checking her watch and looking over her shoulder, but she stuck with her plan to stay with the pack and be patient. Between the mile and the 1.5 mile mark she started to get a little bit of space and then she really started to open it up over the first bridge at 1.5 miles. She came out of the woods with a sizable lead and did nothing but keep extending it all the way to the finish. Satellite's #1 and #2, Ashley Shiver and Juliana Stern, also started asserting themselves after 1.5 and took their second and third place positions all the way to the end. In reality, the top positions in the race were decided in the woods. Holy Trinity's depth helped them to take home the team title, it was Lake Highland though who was most surprising. They showed superb depth and beat out favored runner-up Satellite for second place, despite Satellite going 2-3. Lake Highland was just 18 points back from Holy Trinity and their team average was 20:14 to the Tigers' 19:50.

Boys Race Summary

Bryan Suarez lead early and then Kyle Cooke took over to stay. By the time he reached the mile mark it was clear to see it was his race. He looked relaxed and in control. Suarez looked good also. John Culver was kind of a surprise with his hanging on to third with Michael Burke in fourth. This race was really decided in the front positions even earlier than the girls. Really little changed past the mile mark. Cooke had a really big lead on Suarez with about 1200 to go and then somehow by the finish that lead and shrunken to 6 seconds. Suarez seems like he had one heck of a closing mile and you may need to look out once he gets a little more fitness and experience in big races! Cooke ended up in 16:00, Suarez, Culver, Burke, and freshman Armando del Valle was Miami Columbus' first finisher in fifth place 16:27. The Columbus train kept coming after that... they had 16:59 team average and 80 points. They had another runner at 17:01 who won the JV race--this guy would have been their #2 and no doubt been into the 16s with the competition of the varsity race. Winter Park looked strong with a great pack in the 17s, just were not strong up front. Holy Trinity looked awesome through three but will need to get 4 and 5 to close the gap before they can contend with the state's best. Ferguson finished in 4th place after losing two varsity runners to disciplinary action (for good) this past week and Daniel Manco did not run today (not sure why yet,,, but I will find out!). With Manco and if a solid #5 can be established they'll be back in the hunt.