Not every meet or race will a team be at full strength missing a key runner or two, while some might not be feeling their best. This past Saturday at the flrunners.com Invitational did not appear to be one of those days for the Indian Rocks Christian boys. They were back rocking at full strength in the Race of Champions en route to a dominant team win.
The Indian Rocks Christian boys are the two-time defending 1A state champions and after a season opening win at the Cecil Field Summer Classic looked even better than their 2021 and 2022 title winning lineups.
However, their lack of depth beyond their strong top 5 showed a few weeks later at the North Port Invitational when they were missing a pair or varsity scorers in Nicholas Zamora and Ethan Esposito as despite having three sub 16 minute performers in race winner Blake Young as well as Aidan Griffin and Jonah Berry faltered to a sixth place team finish.
Drone Race Video: flrunners.com Boys Race of Champions
Clearly showed vulnerability in a team that needs all of their top 5 runners healthy and ready to race. At the flrunners.com Invitational this past weekend, Indian Rocks Christian got the services back of Zamora and Esposito to once again reaffirm themselves as one of the best teams in the state of Florida regardless of classification. After nationally ranked Belen Jesuit, Indian Rocks Christian might be the next best team in the state.
Speaking of Belen Jesuit, they had a long streak of team titles at the Race of Champions in the flrunners.com Invitational snapped this past weekend since they sent their top varsity lineup to race at Great American this past weekend with the meet weekends conflicting after the flrunners.com Invite had to switch weekends with FSU Pre-State Invitational due to FSU home football games. Belen sent essentially their "C" squad to flrunners Invite and still finished 8th in the 35 team field.
Meanwhile, Indian Rocks Christian while would have enjoyed a rare opportunity to compete against Belen Jesuit's best as a measuring stick to see where the program is compared to a top 5 nationally ranked team also seized the opportunity to hoist up the first place team trophy this weekend at Holloway Park.
Leading the charge for Coach Bobby Labrant's team as always was Blake Young, who joined an elite group of sub 16 performers all-time at Holloway Park with a 15:55 performance for third place. Young along with Palmer Trinity's Henry Stark are looking like two of the top contenders for the 1A individual state title this fall.
Indian Rocks Christian was able to get its remaining top 5 runners now at full strength all under 17 minutes and among the top 35 places in the Race of Champions between Jonah Berry (14th, 16:20), Nicholas Zamora (17th, 16:31), Aidan Griffin (20th, 16:34), and Ethan Esposito (34th, 16:50).
Their team score of 77 points put them well ahead of 4A podium hopeful squad Sunlake with 102 points in second place as well as arguably the #2 ranked team in 3A and North Port Invitational champions Naples in third place with 107 points.
The top 4 teams in the race all had top team averages under 17 minutes for their top 5 runners at Holloway Park, which is tough to do with Indian Rocks Christian at 16:26, Sunlake at 16:37, Naples at 16:38, and Hagerty at 16:43.
While Indian Rocks Christian had a tight spread of 54 seconds for their top 5 runners, the gap between their #5 finisher Esposito at 16:50 and their sixth finisher Anthony Hickey in 146th place at 18:25 is still the only concerning red flag for a team that seems destined to win their third straight state title.
If even just one of their top 5 runners gets injured, sick, or does not finish a race down the stretch in championship season, it could be a drastically different team scoring and outcome for their loaded squad up front without much security in depth beyond their talented pack of five. It will be the key to a three peat in keeping their front five healthy over the next month.
The Sunlake boys fresh off rolling to fast times and personal bests across the board at the Asics Alexander Invitational in Georgia the weekend prior instead of racing at FSU Pre-State Invitational got a chance to race on a much different course with different expectations of slower times on the challenging but fair Holloway Park course.
Sunlake was very well packed with their top 5 runners all breaking 17 minutes similar to Indian Rocks Christian in a very tight spread of 26 seconds with senior Joshua Hindman as their top finisher in 13th place at 16:19 and followed in by his sophomore brother Christian Hindman in 19th at 16:34, while teammates Oscar Brown (23rd, 16:41), Joaquin Abansas (30th, 16:45), and Cade Culpepper (31st, 16:45) rounded out the team's scoring.
While FSU Pre-State Invitational certainly saw many of the top contending boys teams in the 4A classification battle head to head with Nease appearing to be the best squad out of that heap with their third place finish, Sunlake might have been missing in action from that competition but believe has shown in their recent race performances that they are certainly to be strongly considered as one of the teams with the best shots to earn a state meet podium spot as either the state champions or state runners-up this fall in 4A.
Naples last week taking seventh place at the FSU Pre-State Invitational finished just behind some of the teams that Sunlake will be racing against in that 4A state race including leapfrogging Hagerty who finished sixth in Tallahassee, but fourth place this weekend in Lakeland.
Naples, the #2 ranked team in 3A, like Indian Rocks Christian and Sunlake, was able to see their top 5 runners all cross the finish line at Holloway Park under 17 minutes between Hector Toro (11th, 16:14), Reece Lolly (21st, 16:37), Matthew Damouni (27th, 16:43), Michael Brewer (29th, 16:45), and Jack Marshall (16:49). Only 34 seconds separated their top 5, which only Sunlake (26 seconds) and Belen Jesuit (33 seconds) had a tighter spread in the Race of Champions.
Very likely the top 3 teams from the flrunners.com Invitational will all find themselves on the state meet podium at season's end at Apalachee Regional Park.
The Hagerty boys in fourth place has been steadily one of the top 5 and definitely well inside the top 10 ranked teams in 4A for much of the 2023 cross country season. Their squad was led by the individual race champion in Jonathan Leon, who clocked the third fastest time in course history with his swift 15:39 run leading 3 others under 16 minutes including Berkeley Prep's Liam Jordan (2nd, 15:54), Indian Rocks Christian's Blake Young (3rd, 15:55), and Westminster Academy's Jonathan Pena (4th, 15:56).
The Hagerty senior Leon was able to control the race from the front and start separating from Jordan, Young, Pena and the rest of the field after the first mile in the woods section of the course and keep his distance ahead of them.
Leon was coming off a personal best 15:15 5K run for fifth place at the FSU Pre-State Invitational, but is looking to close the 15 second gap that exists between him and reigning 4A state champion Matt Ryan of Nease in just over a month. Arguably his 15:39 performance at Holloway Park equates to an even more impressive race to come his return trip to the ARP in November.