Wildcats dominate cross country championship

When the Winter Park girls cross country team went to the state championships Nov. 7, they were already three minutes faster than two of the state’s four 4A regional champions. But the blowout that they laid down on the hilly, forested 5K at Apalachee Regional Park set the bar for a team that will return all but two of its points-scoring runners next year.

And they didn’t even need a season-peak performance to pull it off. Despite running a team average 30 seconds slower than they did in regionals, the Wildcats dominated, outrunning the next best team, Sarasota, by nearly 40 seconds.

Winter Park’s star distance runner, Rafaella Gibbons, blasted to an 18:41.31 finish, good enough for fifth overall in the 5K race. Juniors Hana Herndon and Elizabeth Jenkins and sophomore Melanie White added valuable points to seal the championship. Freshman Jennifer Coddington finished ahead of four other teams’ best runners. And the Wildcats’ two seniors, Katherine Kuhn and Emily Nix, finish their last year as Wildcats collectively on top of their sport.