Behind an impressive runner-up finish by junior Savanna Gornisiewicz, the Pine Crest Girls Varsity Cross Country Team finished second in the 3A/4A race at the FL Runners Invitational in Titusville.

(See the post-race interview with Savanna at the following link:www.fl.milesplit.com)

Junior Jordan Gershman finished first for our boys team with a time of 17:43.
 Read on for Coach Baur's recap.

Congratulations to the girls and boys cross country teams for their performances at the FL Runners Invitational in Titusville. Our teams, running in the 3A/4A race at the request of the meet director, did a great job against schools we would normally not compete against. The girls team finished 2nd overall in the 24 team field and just 20 points back from 3A powerhouse St. Cloud. The boys team finished in 15th place, out of 28 teams, and were 4th among the other 2A schools that were competing in the higher classification invitational.

In the girls race, Savanna Gornisiewicz showed that she was not going to be deterred from believing she could win the race and defeat any competitor, even if is was only her fourth race since 8th grade. She went out with Mackenzie Wilson, from Episcopal who ran 18:39 last year, and ran with her step for step the entire race. With about 800m to go Savanna took the lead and maintained it until the last stretch when Mackenzie passed Savanna for the victory. Savanna's runner up performance was still a huge PR dropping 34 seconds to run 19:17! Savanna later gave away her race strategy while conducting an interview in which she said she would just go out with the lead pack and try and stay with them.

Ella Wurth finished in 5th place dropping 24 seconds to set a new SB time and fighting off fellow 2A competitor from Episcopal. Nicole Golden, making her first ever trip to FL Runners, made her presence felt finishing in 9th with a time of 20:31. What an incredible 1-2-3 for us as we were the only team to put three girls in the top 10! Hannah Montague was our #4 runner with a SB time by 6 seconds to run 21:46 and finish 33rd overall. Arianna Garvin stepped up big time and coming from behind in the last 300m to pass a pack of 3 other girls all separated by 3 seconds to finish in 22:25. Ali Corominas finished with a time of 23:07, while Kaely Malik and Haley Fox both ran SB times improving by 1:07 to finish in 24:15 and 17 seconds to finish in 26:03 respectively. Rounding things out were Allie Gershman, who fought through a sickness to finish the race and Taylor Allenby who dropped 58 seconds to run a SB of 28:45.

The boys were led by Jordan Gershman who finished 27th overall with a SB time of 17:43, dropping 15 seconds. David Saperstein ran a SB by 8 seconds and was only 3 seconds away from his PR time, but destroyed his previous best time that he ran last year by 1:12! Jacob Goldberg was next with a SB by 15 seconds to run 19:20 while Mauricio Pissaris was one second behind in 19:21. Jake Wolpert, 110th, and Cameron Wheeler, 111th, were just 7 seconds back and both finished with a time of 19:28. Cameron's time was a huge improvement dropping 1:45 for a new SB! Troy Gonzalez was next with a SB by 5 seconds to run 20:03 while Joseph Cabral andAlex Meade both set a new PR's dropping 25 seconds to run 20:49 and 13 seconds to run 20:50 respectively. Rounding out the varsity runners was Sammy Krouse who finished with a SB by 7 seconds running 22:07.

In the JV race Yuki Natsui dropped 57 seconds to set a new PR with a time of 21:49 while Ajay Singh dropped 48 seconds to run a new SB time of 24:07. Michael Varnerin dropped the most time out of all our runners in setting a new PR, 24:13, with an improvement of 1:21.