Meet Preview: King Of The Hill

Virtual Meet Projections: Boys - Girls

There will be another big weekday meet scheduled down in Miami as over 50 schools and nearly 900 runners will be racing in the King of the Hill meet at Tropical Park on Friday.

flrunners.com will be on-site with race video and photo coverage.

Adam Magoulas and the Belen Jesuit boys will be heavily favorited to win and dominate the boys' competition fresh off their big win this past Saturday at Florida Horse Park in the driver's seat again to keep their streak of 3A state team titles going on. Jesuit has nearly a dozen runners (11) who have run sub 17 minutes for 5K led by Magoulas with a 15:26 PR. 

Host school and defending 4A state champions Christopher Columbus will likely be the next closest team in the standings on Friday with Nicholas Ivonnet as their leader. Ivonnet, Jeshua Osorio of Mater Lakes Academy, Ryan Sarafoglu of Coral Park, and George Stark of Palmer Trinity are the best individuals in the race capable of breaking up the Belen Jesuit top 5 and perfect-scoring the meet. 

The girls' race will have a lot more drama on who will be the winners as the individual race projects to be a three-way toss-up between runners ranked among the top 25 overall in the state including 4A girls 3200-meter state champ Penelope Sosa of Miami Coral Park, Ashley Fitzgerald of American Heritage, and Emma Hencock of St. Brendan.

Both Sosa and Fitzgerald were supposed to make their season debuts last week at the FNU Invitational on Thursday before the meet was postponed due to storms, while Hencock is the top returnee from when this meet was last held in 2019 with a 5th place finish of 20:45 as a freshman. 

A trio of teams also have a shot at taking home the team title between Gulliver Prep, Our Lady of Lourdes Academy, and St. Brendan as the only 3 schools in the meet with top 5 team averages between this year's times and last year's returning times in the 20-minute range.