Seven area schools kicked off the 2016 season at the Benjamin School in West Palm Beach. Teams started off on the football field, circling baseball fields, and finally finishing on the track. Suncoast senior Annie Allmark picked up her first win of the season as did Jupiter Christian's Josh Skielnik who was in his second race of the year.
Starting with the girls race, there was a tight pack in the front between three runners. Suncoast senior Annie Allmark took the lead and held that position for the entire race. Jupiter Christian sophomore Kemper Reback and 7th grader Mia Taylor followed right behind on Allmark's heels. Allmark, who was 3rd at the 3A state meet in the 1,600 and was 15th at the 2A Cross Country Finals finished first in a time of 22:10. Reback finished right behind her in 22:10. Taylor fell off the pace towards the end, but was able to close strong and finish with a time of 23:19.
The win was a sweet victory for Allmark, who took about five weeks off and trained lightly due to plantar fasciiitis she suffered at the end of the track season. Once she went to running camp she amped her mileage to about 40 per week. She says now everything is good and she feels in better shape than prior to the injury.
"It was pretty much my first cross country race this season, so I just wanted to go out there see how I felt and see what the competition had up here in the north part of the county. It was more of a tempo run I would say, more of a practice ."
Not only, does she have high goals for herself this season, but she wants to see her team live up to expectations as well.
"For my team I hope that we can improve. We were county champs last year so I'm hoping we can do that again. I'm hoping to help my team out and make it to states with them since we missed out on that last year. My personal goal is to hopefully break 19 minutes and is my dream for this season. It would be a good start going into college."
For the boys race, one runner took off from the gun and pushed the pace. That runner was junior Josh Skielnik from Jupiter Christian who took the lead and held it for the entire race. Behind Josh was a decent pack of guys including Dwyer's Ivan Piccioni and Suncoast's Jacob DeFazio who would leave the rest of the runners.
Skielnik, who ran his first week last weekend at the Wickham Park Cross Country Jamboree and finished 5th in a time of 16:12, won the race at Benjamin School with a time of 17:50. Piccioni was second in 19:06 with DeFazio third in 19:28.
"I went out somewhat fast but then I ended up falling back because there was no one to hang with. I normally have someone up there in the front or at least near by so it was a different feeling. I've only won a couple of races and I've never ran that far out before but it wasn't a fast race for me. My goals this year are to win the 1A state title in cross and to run sub 15:40. I'm going to run Foot Locker and try to get top 10. Ut's a pretty big goal, but I'm going to do it."