Men's and Women's Cross Country Team is Heading to Region 8 Meet

Oct 26th, 2018

The Men's and Women's Cross Country teams head to Tallahassee for the NJCAA Region 8 meet at the Apalachee Regional Park Cross Country course.  The men's 8k race starts at 8am followed by the women's 5k at 9am.  The men will complete against runners from Seminole State College, Tallahassee Community College, and Florida State College - Jacksonville.  The Falcons have beaten all three teams in the regular season and look to claim the title in only the first year of the program.  Coach Judy Wilson, in her first year at the helm, and her 20th year of coaching, sees this meet as a good opportunity for the men's team to establish a name for themselves within the state of Florida.  All of the Falcon runners are from within the state, led by Sophomores Ari Guardascione-Wolf of Lake Howell HS and Tyler Simmons of Spruce Creek HS.  Wilson has been excited about the progress of the team and is looking forward to finishing out the season on a high note.  "We want to see how many of our guys finish in the top ten at this race.  It's a very small race, so it will be important to run together as long as they can." 

On the women's side, there will be eight teams competing.  Along with the Falcons, schools from Seminole State College, Pasco Hernando State College, South Florida State College, Florida Gateway College, Tallahassee Community College, Chipola, and Florida State College at Jacksonville will all be competing for the Region 8 title.  Kristine Gray and Bego Lopez who bring several years of competitive experience to the Falcon team will lead the Falcons.  "Kris and Bego have really done a great job of competing in a type of race that they had no experience with.  They have really helped the younger runners develop this season.  I'm really excited to see how Kylie Dedeo, Moriya Patsch, and Janie Davidson will compete in these next two races as they have improved so much from the start of the year.  None of them ran last year as Janie and Moriya were at Daytona State, and Kylie was at UNF and did not run there."  Coach Wilson said.   The women's team has beaten all the region teams except Pasco Hernando and were only a few points behind TCC early in the season.  "If everyone does their part, we are definitely top 2, and you should never ever rule out winning!" said Coach Wilson.