As expected the reigning 2A state champion squads from Bolles for both boys and girls rolled through the competition at the 2A District 2 Meet held at Bishop Kenny in Jacksonville on Monday to kick off district championship week in Florida.
The #1 ranked girls squad in the state of Florida in Bolles nearly perfect scored their district meet with 17 points sweeping the top 4 spots individually and taking 5 of the top 7.
Bolles was led by the senior tandem of Jillian Candelino and Ella Mickler as the two sub-18-minute 5K performers comfortably cruised around the two-loop course together and even crossed the line together holding hands raised high in a time of 18:39. The chip read had to give one of the runners the victory and ended up being Mickler celebrating a rare first place finish as typically sits in the #2 spot behind the defending state champion and University of Tennessee recruit Candelino.
Another college-bound senior in Emory University recruit Elizabeth Csikai grabbed third place with a 19:18 performance. Csikai announced her decision to attend the Southeast Division 3 powerhouse program Emory during the team's recent trip to New York City at the Manhattan Invitational.
The first non-senior finisher for Bolles and will be part of a tough task next year to fill the void left by the likes of Candelino, Mickler, and Csikai was sophomore Estella Bruneau in fourth place at 19:30, while another fellow 10th grader in Elizabeth McClure rounded out their team's scoring in seventh place and just missing out on sub 20 minutes at a finishing time of 20:08.
The only runners able to break up the scoring five individually in the field were Episcopal School sophomore Lucrezia Gowdy (5th, 19:51) and Bishop Kenny junior Davis Johnson (6th, 19:54).
Both were leading squads who are among a pack of schools in 2A that has a shot of being that second team on the podium at the state meet vying for that state runner-up spot behind a certain another state title to be won by Bolles this fall.
On this day, Episcopal School had the advantage over the host team Bishop Kenny with a team score of 53 points and a team average of 20:24 compared to Kenny with 68 points and a team average of 20:39.
The last time that Episcopal ran on the course at the Katie Caples Invitational, they opted to not run in the top elite race and next-level varsity race and comfortably won coming off a travel trip to North Carolina on the weekend prior.
At FSU Pre-State Invitational with the Bolles missing in action since they were competing at the Eastern States Championships in the Manhattan Invitational on the same day, Episcopal was the top-performing 2A school in the results merge for the classification and just ahead of Bishop Kenny. The margin was 91 to 98 points in hypothetical 2A schools only merging at FSU Pre-State between the two Jacksonville private schools.
In both races, Bishop Kenny was missing one of their top runners in Mary Biagini who would be a huge difference maker and possibly point swing to put them over the top. If she can return to racing at either the regional or state meet then Bishop Kenny is certainly capable of being a state podium squad themselves.
Episcopal has a super young squad with three seventh graders, three freshmen, one sophomore, one junior, and one senior among the 8 potential runners that can run varsity for them.
Meanwhile, the Bolles boys were trying to match their female counterparts and post as low of a team score as possible at the district level and came near close with their 22 points tally.
In the first mile and first loop of the course, Bolles looked like they might even perfect score the race and take the top 5 places as Aidan Ryan had many of his teammates in town behind him as they blitzed the first mile of a rain-soaked course from earlier in the day at Bishop Kenny.
Ultimately, a few talented individuals from other programs in the district would pick off some of Ryan's teammates in the later stages of the race but not many as Bolles would comprise 8 of the top 11 finishers in the race led by the outdoor 1600 and 3200-meter state champion Ryan repeating as the individual district champion with ease in a time of 16:12.
At the start of the season, Ryan was working back from injury but all those questions on his fitness status have been washed away as of late including a 15:16 5K personal best 5K performance only 16 seconds ago at the Alexander Asics Invitational in Florida.
Ryan had a somewhat subpar run on the 2.5 miles (roughly 4K) course at the Manhattan Invitational two weekends ago in a time of 13:12 in the Eastern States Championship race while racing under the weather but appears to be in the driver seat still to chase after his first state cross country title in over two weeks after being a runner-up one year ago.
Rounding out the scoring five for the 2A top-ranked Bolles boys included Christopher Joost (3rd, 16:27), Parker Adams (94th, 16:35), Andrew McGraw (6th, 16:44), and Matthew Thomas FL (8th, 17:02), while William Morales (9th, 17:08), Julian Barre (10th, 17:10), and Alexander Ruge (11th, 17:25) provided added security.
Joost, Adams, Morales, Barre, and Ruge appear to be part of the nucleus of runners returning next year to see if Bolles can make it a 3 peat streak in state titles if they can be victorious once again this November in Tallahassee. Joost is definitely looking to take over as the lead runner from Ryan next year, while Adams has a lot of upside as only a sophomore.
Bishop Kenny junior Juan Pablo Castillo-Zima ran an exceptional last half of his race on his home course to pick off runners in the Bolles pack and close a little bit on the gap between himself and Aidan Ryan to finish as the district runner-up with a 16:23 performance.
The Bishop Kenny boys aided by Castillo-Zima decisively earned the runner-up team trophy with 54 points to put them well ahead of the Eastside boys out of Gainesville in third place with 107 points.
Bishop Kenny had 4 others among the top 20 places and under 18 minutes in Alejandro Vinas (7th, 16:56), Emory Dilts (13th, 17:31), Jack Liuzzo (17th, 17:48), and Alex Shannahan (18th, 17:54).
Eastside in third place was led by a 12th-place run of 17:26 by Declan O'Dwyer.