Zack Poekert, a senior at Cypress Creek High School in Wesley Chapel, opened his 2022 cross country season on Friday evening at the first annual The Claw Distance Classic held at the University of South Florida's golf course in Tampa. He looked smooth and virtually effortless while running away from the field by over a full minute margin of victory in 16:02.
Preseason #8 ranked in the entire state of Florida, Poekert certainly looks to be the next best runner in 3A coming into this season behind last year's state champion Patrick Koon of Leon and state runner-up Joshua Ruiz of Belen Jesuit.
It was a complete Pasco County takeover of a race held in Hillsborough County as the Sunlake boys and girls swept the team titles convincingly at The Claw Distance Classic with junior Abigail Williams leading the girls clocking a new personal best 5K time of 19:48 for the win. A pretty remarkable start for Williams after only breaking 20 minutes once last year on a fast home course at the Sunshine Athletic Conference meet last year and finishing her season with a 20:49 performance at the state meet.
The Sunlake girls swept the top 3 places individually as well with teammates in junior Ally Moyer (2nd, 20:46) and freshman Kailyn Ford (3rd, 20:52) breaking 21 minutes with Williams. Their team score of 25 points put them well ahead of George Steinbrenner in second place with 63 points among 8 schools fielding a full squad in the race.
The Sunlake boys were certainly holding back in a pack running effort letting Poekert go as well as other runners getting out fast in the first mile of the race. Their team's top returnees Alex Pena and Cade Culpepper helped pace their other varsity runners for much of the race before Pena ultimately dropping out of the race intentionally.
Their teamwork paid off with the pack smartly paced early to gaining lots of ground late in the race to grab with 5 of the top 7 places and all at 17:30 or faster with Oscar Brown (2nd, 17:07), Culpepper (3rd, 17:14), Joshua Hindman (4th, 17:14), Liam Ballard (5th, 17:22), and Ben Borton (7th, 17:30). While Sunlake might not have the firepower up front like they did last year with Colby Robbins and Cason Meyer graduating, it appears their team is much deeper than a year ago as they move up to the 4A classification.
Sunlake tallied a winning team score of 16 points putting them well ahead of the host school Freedom High School with 108 points in second place.