Area runners do well

LAKE CITY— Columbia's Brandon Scott admits he is hard on himself because he said he feels it will make him better.

In his final high school cross country race at his home course of Alligator Park, the senior posted his second-best career time of 16:23.30. That performance landed Scott fifth out of 120 runners and led the Tigers to a fourth-place finish in the team standings at Saturday's District 2-3A meet.

"I like the time, but I would have liked a better place, but I'll take it," said Scott, who ran a personal best time of 16:22.78 at the Pre-State Invitational a few weeks ago. "It feels good to run a fast time in your last time on your home course. It was a good day today with how our team did, we did pretty good."

Scott was running in the top four positions through the first mile and shortly after that was when Scott said Jimmy Clark of St. Johns Creekside started to separate himself from the field. Clark, a junior, went on to win the district title in a time of 15:39.01. Christopher Haynes of Jacksonville Robert E. Lee was second (15:59.66), followed by Eric Ochoa of Jacksonville Bartram Trail (16:11.37) and Kamal Koroso of Jacksonville Terry Parker (16:16.49). Bartram Trail won the team title.

The top eight teams of the 17-team field and the top 15 individual runners advanced to next Saturday's Region 1-3A meet at Sunnyhill Farms in Tallahassee. Columbia was the only area boys team to move on. Casey Crane (23rd, 17:38.90), Max Murphy (28th, 17:51.83), Jason Harrison (31st, 17:58.66) and Seth Peterson (36th, 18:06.32) rounded out the top-five finishers for Columbia.

"I was happy with our team," said Columbia coach Robert Cooper, who has guided the Tigers to the regional meet for the third straight year. "As a team performance it was the best we have turned in all year."

Eastside sophomore James Davis was ninth overall (17:09.64) and also earned a spot in next week's regional meet.

On the girls side, Gainesville's Rae Powers clocked a personal-best time of 20:17.89 to place 10th on the primarily flat course that featured a lot of trails. Her performance also led the Hurricanes to sixth place and a berth in next week's regional event.

"I'm really happy, I just really wanted it," said Powers, who also qualified for regionals a year ago. "I had a lot of support today and that really helped."

Powers, who trains over the summer with members of the P.K. Yonge girls cross country, was pleasantly surprised to see the Blue Wave in attendance to cheer her on.

"They surprised me today, it was really awesome," said Powers. "It completed my whole day."

Kayla Vinson won the district title with a time of 19:19.39 and also led Orange Park Ridgeview to the team title.

The top six teams of the 13-team field and the top 15 individual runners advance to regionals.

The rest of GHS' top-five finishers were Gelela Cooley (19th, 21:01.93), Abigail Malpass (54th, 23:34.53), Grace Rohan (56th, 23:36.99) and Megan Lewis (62nd, 24:20.55).

"Rae definitely ran the race we were looking for her to run, she looked comfortable, but she was still fast," said GHS coach Bonnie Rountree-Tillson. "The rest of the ladies still ran really good races, all of them a minute faster than two weeks ago when we were here (at the Greater North Florida Invitational.)"