RESULTS - PHOTO GALLERY
Both varsity races at the Indian Rocks Christian Invitational this past Thursday afternoon at Taylor Park in Largo, Florida came down to the wire to determine the boys and girls winners.
Calvary Christian senior Hailey Howard was able to win her second invitational meet of the season in holding off Tampa HEAT senior Elizabeth Poe by three seconds with a 19:48 victory. Howard won the Roaring Tiger Jamboree over two weeks ago in Palmetto with a very similar time performance of 19:46. Poe was coming off a ninth-place finish of 20:06 in her opener at a competitive Babe Zaharias Twilight Challenge last Friday.
The two runners had broken away by a significant margin from the rest of the field with the third-place finisher over a minute and a half behind them.
Meanwhile, Poe's Tampa HEAT squad (49 pts) would get the slight edge over Howard's Calvary Christian squad (51 pts) in the team standings by only two points in the five-team meet.
The boys' top pack at the meet was a lot larger and less spread out, but ultimately Indian Rocks Christian senior Mateo Luna would pull away for the win in his home meet with a 16:30 clocking by the All-State distance runner in 1A. It was his first race of the 2021 cross country season after closing last year's campaign with a 15:44 5K PR at the RunningLane National Championships.
Luna was able to use his 4:23 miler speed ultimately to edge ahead of his closest competitors in Zackary Florendo of Calvary Christian in second place at 16:35 and Tristan McWilliam of Out of Door Academy in third place at 16:40. Florendo has secured back-to-back runner-up finishes in his first two invitational races of the season with his performance at the Indian Rocks Christian Invite being a new 5K personal best for him.
The Indian Rocks Christian boys also enjoyed and celebrated a team title while serving the role as meet hosts tallying a low score of 28 points ahead of Calvary Christian with 41 points. Indian Rocks Christian projects to be one of the better teams in the 1A classification and certainly looked the part on Thursday with 5 runners among the top 10 places at 17:31 or faster for a spread just over 60 seconds behind race winner Luna.