The Mike Gibson Summertime Run is the annual kick off preseason cross country meet for Orlando area schools at Lake Mary High School. Athletes from 20 different teams participated in the 2022 edition of the meet held on Saturday, August 20th.
In the girls' race, an 8th grader in Cheyenne Thomas from Red Sea Running Club and Tavares Middle School shot out fast from the gun on the field. Chasing after her and catching up in the first mile was The Master's Academy junior Ava Wyant, coming off a stellar track season including running a 4:53 for 1600 meters.
Thomas won a FLYRA middle school state title last year as a 7th grader running 10:58 for 3K at Holloway Park, while running 10:28 on the track for 3K as the runner-up at the FLYRA Middle School State Track Championships. She got a rare opportunity on Saturday to race up at the 5K distance and against top high school competition as the majority of her remaining season races will be against middle school runners at the 3K distance.
The 8th grader Thomas hung tough with the junior Wyant and ultimately finished second with a new 5K PR of 19:15. Wyant, who only broke 19 minutes once last cross country season at the Eastbay South Regional in the post-season with 18:42 PR, started off her 2022 season running not far off sub 19 with a 19:07 victory at the Mike Gibson Summertime Run and able to create an 8 second buffer on Thomas in the final mile. Wyant will be in the mix for the 1A state title this fall and certainly looking to race for state titles in the spring at the mid distance events after also running a 2:13 800 as well this spring.
Lake Minneola won the girls team title tallying 50 points including 4 runners in the top 12 places with Jasmine Williams (3rd, 19:47), Ava Hendrix (6th, 19:56), Ava Aseere (11th, 21:07), and Ashlyn Leviner (12th, 21:21). Nadia La Rosa rounded out the team's scoring in 20th place (22:04) as Lake Minneola's fifth finisher.
Just as impressive was 8th grader Cheyenne Thomas finishing second in the high school girls race was her Red Sea Running Club squad comprised of runners from Tavares Middle School finishing as the runner-up squad out of 16 full squads scoring and the other 15 being high school teams. Red Sea Running Club had 3 finishers among the top 15 places with Thomas and fellow 8th grader team members in the Knoll sisters Cassidy Knoll (8th, 20:44) and Caitlyn Noll (13th, 21:32). Red Sea Running Club's team score of 68 points was not too far off the team champions from Lake Minneola, while well ahead of the third place team Oviedo High School with 131 points.
After finishing fourth in last year's Mike Gibson Summertime Run with a time of 17:50, Lake Nona junior Dylan Torres made a huge time drop to win this year's race in a new 5K personal best time of 16:30. Torres was coming off a track season which he broke 10 minutes for 3200 meters (9:56) and ran 4:35 for 1600 meters. Torres is hoping after a good summer of training that he is ready to make the jump and qualify individually for his first state meet this season.
Torres had Lake Mary's own Price Wheeler to push him and guide him thru the first loop on his home course. Torres was able to pull away on the second loop though to win by a margin of 17 seconds as Wheeler came across the line in second place at 16:47 for a new 5K personal best. Wheeler was at Lake Brantley prior to this year and transferred in for his senior year. Wheeler also had a big time drop from last year's Mike Gibson Summertime Run when he finished 19th one year ago with a time of 18:55, so over 2 minute improvement for him.
Wheeler almost also helped lead his new team to the title in their home race as well with Lake Mary tallying a low total team score of 52 points, but Oviedo was just slightly better with 46 points for first place in the team standings. Oviedo ran disciplined as a pack with only 36 seconds separating their first five scoring finishers in Marc McDonald (6th, 17:19), Robert Bellamy (7th, 17:21), Colin Aysun (11th, 17:33), James Unwin (13th, 17:53), and Jonah Fredell (14th, 17:55) with Aiden Aysun (15th, 18:03) providing extra security and depth as the team's sixth finisher among the top 15 too.
Lake Mary matched up well with Oviedo thru 3 runners with race runner-up Wheeler and teammates Connor Stromberg (5th, 17:15) and Nathan Henning (8th, 17:30) finishing inside the top 10 and with times at 17:30 or faster, but the Oviedo pack rolled in after that to secure first.