Montverde Academy senior Riley Novack has finally made his college decision after a long drawn out process including a busy stretch of college visits over the last few months. Novack will stay in state and has committed to run for the University of Florida Gators in Gainesville.
During the middle of the cross country season, Novack might not have been the top sought after senior distance recruit in Florida as had a pretty low key and light season of races.
But after a post-season that saw him drop a 9:10 3200 PR at the flrunners.com PR Festival on the Track then qualify for Champs (formerly Foot Locker) Nationals in San Diego with a sub 15 minute 5K performance at McAlpine Greenway Park in Charlotte at the South Regional, Novack suddenly started drawing a lot more attention from major Division 1 college coaches.
Novack ended up taking visits to University of South Florida, Notre Dame, NC State, and Florida State before his final visit at the University of Florida. Thought he might consider the out of state programs, but ultimately decided not to go too far from home as Gainesville is only a 90 minute drive back to his hometown of Tavares.
He will join a strong group of Florida's top distance runners that will be part of the incoming freshmen class for UF including Miguel Pantojas of Hagerty, Emerson Miller of Buchholz, Alec Miller of Sarasota, and Alex Pena of Sunlake among others. Some of those athletes had committed to University of Florida with the prior head distance coach Chris Solinksy before he decided to leave for a similar assistant position at the University of Oregon.
Novack is actually one of the first distance commits to the University of Florida since Will Palmer took over the distance program with Solinsky's departure after leaving the University of Alabama to come to Florida.
Currently, Novack is resting a stress reaction to one foot after running fast times indoors with a 2:29 1000 and 4:12 mile but hopes to be back racing again in time for the championship season of outdoor track.
