Trinity Prep Invitational Summary

Olympia girls celebrating their win.

Photo by Dean Headley

On Saturday morning Trinity Prep High School hosted their annual Trinity Prep Cross Country Invitational. After a rainy Friday night, the course was a damp and mushy three laps around a lake, baseball field, and tennis court, with a 100 meter finish on the school’s track. Going into the race, Olympia looked to be a favorite to win the team title for girls while Trinity Prep appeared to be the top boys’ team.

 

The girls’ varsity race started out as a three woman race between Junior Bryce Seymour of Circle Christian, Olympia’s junior Kaitlyn Campo and freshman Emily Headley. Lake Howell Junior Regan Farrow held up just behind this top pack towards the beginning, but fell back after the first mile. After two miles, it was a tight race between Campo and Seymour with Headley trailing right behind them, until she made her move to take the lead. When Headley began to push the pace, Seymour tagged along with her while Campo stayed back in third. Arriving to the track with about 100 meters to go, Headley and Seymour were neck and neck. They both took off, pushing to get to the finish line first, but in the end, Headley took the win with a time of 18:49. Seymour ran a 18:50 for second and Campo got third with a 19:04. Olympia took home the team trophy with a narrow victory over Oak Hall 47-54.

 

Once all the girls finished, the boys lined up to begin their race. From the start it was clear that it was going to be a race at the front between senior Quincy O’Connor of Celebration, Olympia’s senior Mitchell Moore, and Trinity Prep’s senior Daniel Salas as they all took off strong from the start. After a mile, Moore fell back while O’Connor and Salas stayed next to each other the entire time, pushing each other through each painful second. Once again, the race came down to the final 100 meters on the track where O’Connor and Salas went back and forth with the lead until O'Connor finally pushed up to the front and passed the finish line just before Salas. O'Connor's time of 16:10.12 was two seconds better than Salas.  Moore rounded out the top three in 16:47.25.

 

Even without #1 runner Ryan Gouse, who was taking ACTs this morning, Trinity Prep easily won the team title behind Salas' second place finish with just 38 points.

 

After these great battles and the JV races, the meet came to an end. The warm Saturday meet was filled with tight races that came down to strong kicks in the end giving Headley and O'Connor the wins. This invitational provided teams with an opportunity for teams to see where they truly are this early in the season against some of the top competition. It just goes to show that good competition provides fast times by runners who stick with the top pack.