For the past 10 years the 5 Star Conference Championship has only once left the familiar territory of Deland’s Sperling Sports Complex. In 2011 due to scheduling problems and some differences in opinion on what time would be safest for the runners to actually compete the meet will make a rare trip to the Flagler county fairgrounds for tomorrow’s event. This meet is all about rivalries, and it is well evidenced when looking at the results since 2000. In the years since the turn of the century the winning team has only had 2 choices in uniform color, either the green and white of Flagler Palm Coast or the black and orange of Spruce Creek.
Spruce Creek’s girls come in as the heavy favorite with an average time of 19:56.61 over the bulldogs of FPC’s average of 21:53.80. The top girl for Creek is Jocelyn Adona, whose 19:35.70 (SB) is only narrowly ahead of #2 girl Kaitlyn Kelly’s 19:35.79. Indeed the ladies from Creek will bring in some fresh legs after taking the past week off from competition to enjoy the homecoming festivities, and looking to build momentum going into the state series events that begin next week. One of the most interesting battles might well be which team gets runner up honors as the rebuilding FPC and New Smyrna programs appear to be fairly evenly matched.
On the boys side much like the girls the rivalry between the two teams has dominated these championships with the bulldogs winning 7 of the past ten years. The names of the individual champions are etched in Florida cross country history, Harbor, Vasquez, Morales, Cianciulli and Rudloff. In fact 6 of those past 10 years belong to either Justin Harbor of FPC or Chris Rudloff of Mainland, so who will bring their “A” game on Wednesday and emerge as the champ? On paper a week ago it would have appeared that Spruce Creek had the inside track, but what a difference a week can make. Flagler’s boys put on an impressive performance at the Alligator Lake Invitational this past weekend where they were led by Thomas Carrol’s 16:39.93 (PR) along with 3 other bulldogs under the 17 minute barrier dropped their average time to 16:53.86, well within striking distance of Spruce Creek’s 16:45.27 who are led by Andrew Carpenter(16:25.69), Kyler Kathman(16:28.48) and Michael Fabian (16:39.01). Deland’s Keneth Pineiro comes in as the top runner with very impressive 16:15.79, while Seabreeze’s James Blasco has been on a streak lately dropping his PR down to 16:34.91. It’s going to be another close one and should produce some great times as it’s being run under the lights in cooler weather.