Cross-Country | Saint Stephen's advances boys and girls to region meet

BRADENTON -- Saint Stephen's is sending both its boys and girls cross country teams to regional meets following Friday's Class 1A-District 7 meet at G.T. Bray park.

The Falcons placed second in the boys division with 71 points, while the girls took third with 73.

The top five boys teams and top four girls teams advanced.

St. Petersburg Shorecrest swept the district meet with titles in both divisions.

On the boys side, Cardinal Mooney also progressed to next Friday's Region 2 meet at Lakeland's Holloway Park by snagging third place with 86 points.

Out-of-Door Academy narrowly missed qualifying from both divisions, placing sixth in the boys and fifth in the girls.

No other area boys or girls program advanced as a team.

However, the top 15 individual runners also advanced from each division.

That meant ODA's Terra Ehrhart moved on following a time of 21 minutes, 16.99 seconds. That snagged the eighth-grader a runner-up finish in the girls division.

Mooney sophomore Tatum Weishaar took 14th to advance.

There were no area participants on the boys side that placed in the top 15 other than from Saint Stephen's and Mooney, who were already advancing.

Mooney's Tyler Ross (fifth place, 17:36.40) and Saint Stephen's Henry Howell (sixth, 17:44.23) had the best finishes among area runners on the boys side.

The individual champions were Shorecrest's Luke Peterson (16:38.62) and Shorecrest's Olivia Rovin (20:37.41).

Mooney's girls team placed sixth, while Bradenton Christian only competed with a boys team and took 10th among the 11 teams competing in that division.

MACRAE, AARON, SOUTHEAST GIRLS ADVANCE -- Southeast senior Dominic MacRae finished fifth overall and Bayshore junior Brandon Aaron placed 11th in the Class 2A-District 10 cross country meet Friday at Clearwater Central Catholic to advance to next Saturday's 2A-Region 3 meet at Englewood Lemon Bay.

Unfortunately, neither of their respective teams were able to join them because they failed to finish among the top three teams.

MacRae, who won the district title last season, finished the 3.1-mile race in 18:15.70 and Aaron turned in a time of 19:17.60.

The Southeast girls placed third to qualify for the regions. The Lady Seminoles were led by Autumn MacRae who placed seventh (23:06.20) and Emily Marie Marhold, who turned in a time of 23:08,90 to place eighth. The other girls on the Southeast's qualifying team who scored points were Katrina Hryck, Madelyn Kumar and Yosselin Linares-Gonz.

In this district, the top three teams and the top 15 individuals qualified for the region meet.

OLGUIN, PALMETTO BOYS MOVE ON -- In the Class 3A-10 meet on Thursday at Eagle Lake Park in Largo, the Palmetto boys finished fourth to qualify for next week's regional meet.

Josh Fleming led Palmetto by finishing ninth overall with a time of 17:23.20 for the 3.1-mile run. The Tigers' Matt Connor placed 13th overall (17:37.41). For the girls, Palmetto senior Luz Olguin qualified as an individual by placing 12th overall (21:14.20).

The regional meet is scheduled for Friday at Holloway Park in Lakeland. The girls race begins at 8:50 a.m. followed by the boys.

This story was originally published October 24, 2015 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Cross-Country | Saint Stephen's advances boys and girls to region meet ."