by Grant Mollet, East Ridge High School
Photos taken by Dave Worthington and Grant Mollett
September 25, 2021 – West Orange, Florida
The East Ridge High School girls’ cross country team competed in the West Orange High School Invitational in Winter Garden on Saturday morning. The temperature, which held at about 72 degrees, was a bit of a reprieve from some of the muggier and humid mornings from earlier in the season. The last time the girls’ team raced at West Orange High School was last October at the district meet, so many of the girls knew the course and the terrain quite well. It was at that district meet where the girls team came up short by one team position from qualifying for the regional championships. However, it was also at last season’s district meet at West Orange that was the setting for two great performances by individuals who ultimately qualified for the regional meet.
One of those performances came from junior Bre Peine who saw today as an opportunity to showcase her progress from eleven months ago! The Knights continued from last week’s successes with more season-best and career-best performances this week! Five of the seven girls who ran in the varsity race set either new season-best records and/or new career personal best records – including Bre!
Girls from 26 different schools throughout Central Florida participated in the West Orange High School Invitational today. The varsity girls race started at 7:20 AM. The start of the race took the girls across some athletic fields near the football stadium. Then, the course took the runners around two loops around the back end of the campus, rounding some soccer fields, and through a small wooded area.
For the fifth race in a row, junior Sophie Roemmen has been the first Knight to cross the finish line! Sophie also set a new season/career personal best record by finishing today’s race in a swift time of 20:44 – a seven-second improvement from last week! Sophie placed 19th overall out of a field of 147 varsity female runners!
Freshman Hanna Warren also set a new season/career personal best, as she finished in a swift time of 21:28! Hanna took 30th place overall and improved more than thirty seconds from last week’s performance! Junior Bre Peine finished in 37th place and also set a new career/season-best with a time of 21:46! Bre outshined her regional qualifying performance from last season at the district meet at West Orange by eight seconds!
Freshman Neely Lugo was the fourth scoring Knight this morning. She finished in 23rd place and in a time of 22:29 – just shy of her season-best by five seconds. The fifth finisher and final scorer for East Ridge was junior Alanis Melgar. Alanis finished in 67th place and in a time of 22:54 – a new season/career personal best performance! Alanis’s performance this morning was more than a two-minute improvement from her district time at West Orange last season! Alanis also broke her career personal best, which she set at the regional meet in 2019 when she was a freshman by more than twenty seconds!
The sixth finisher for the Knights was senior Keira Votava. Keira placed 96th overall and finished in a time of 24:20:19 – a new season/career personal best performance! Keira’s race this morning was nearly a minute faster than her performance at the district meet last season at West Orange High School! The seventh finisher for the Knights was freshman J’Mariana Douglas, who followed her teammate in, placing 97th overall and finishing in a time of 24:20:36 – her second-best time of the season.
East Ridge High School placed seventh among twenty complete teams at West Orange High School. Timber Creek High School won the West Orange High School Invitational by placing three runners in the top ten. District rival, Olympia High School, was the runner-up. Olympia placed their top four runners in the top fifteen of the race. East Ridge fell to district rivals West Orange High School, Windermere High School, and Evans High School, but was able to outperform other district rivals, Dr. Phillips High School and Apopka High School. The overall individual winner for the girls’ varsity race was freshman Emily Knopfle from Olympia High School. Knopfle finished today’s race in a swift time of 18:46.
The Knights also had seven runners participate in the girls’ junior varsity race this morning at West Orange High School. Freshman Isabella Stuemke placed twelfth out of a field of 59 junior varsity girls. She finished in a time of 25:31 – a new career/season-best by nearly an entire minute! Junior Brenna Oliveri finished in fourteenth place overall and in a time of 25:58 – a new career personal best performance by two and a half minutes! Sophomore Sarah Tingler finished in 17th place in a time of 26:12 – a new career/season-best performance by nearly thirty seconds! Sophomore Brittni Faber finished in nineteenth place overall and in a time of 26:33 – a new career/season-best record by more than two minutes! Sophomore Kayden Page placed 27th overall and finished in a time of 27:27 – a new career/season-best record by more than a minute and a half! Junior Alexandra Dimitros came in 50th place and finished in a time of 31:58 – a new season-best performance by more than a minute and a half! Junior Isabella Zamudio finished in 58th place in a time of 37:26 in her debut performance as a Knight. The girls’ junior varsity team was the team runner-up at the West Orange High School Invitational this morning!
For full results for the girls’ varsity and junior varsity races at the West Orange High School Invitational visit: http://results.tfmeetpro.com/Elite_Timing_and_Event_Management/West_Onrange_Invitational_2021/#event4.
The girls’ cross country team will travel to Mount Dora Christian Academy on Saturday, October 2nd to participate in the MDCA Run the Hills Race. The race is set to start at 8:00 am.
