Charlotte Roy leads All Saints to 1st district cross country title

All Saints recorded yet another first for its girls cross country since Dale Meskimen took over a couple of years ago. Two years ago, the Saints won their first girls cross country county title. On Wednesday, they won their first district title.With a dominant effort led by individual winner Charlotte Roy, All Saints ran away to win with the girls team title in the Class 1A, District 5 meet at Taylor Park in Largo.Roy won the girls race in 18:17.80 as she and Lakeland Christian junior Emma Wilkinson (18:56.90) were the only two runners to run sub-19 minutes. All Saints finished with 30 points with Indian Rocks Christian far behind in second place with 59 points.“It was not bad at all,” Meskimen said. “I’m pretty pleased.”County meet: All Saints' Roy, Lake Wales' Harris win 1st county cross country titlesRoy ran the race as Meskimen wanted as she took control in the final half mile. The Saints placed four runners in the top 10 as Kyle Cook finished sixth (20:07.20), Lindsey Cook finished eighth (20:29.10) and Savannah Simonds took ninth (20:40.10).All Saints’ No. 5 runner Julia Marra Andrade finished 13th in 21:31.10 and even No. 6 runner Maggie Koch (24th in 22:58.40) finished ahead of Indian Rocks Christian’s No. 5 runner.“Charlotte ran basically the way we wanted to,” Meskimen said. “Kylie was a little off today. Out of all the groups, she's probably the one that didn't run the way I was expecting, but she still didn't, obviously, run horrible. Lindsey ran a season best today. It's the third race in a row where she's ran faster, so I’m hoping that that's a sign that her leg is coming back at the right time. Then 4 and 5, Savannah and Julia, they only missed their PR by one second.”Wilkinson led the LCS girls to a third-place finish as Kenley Allen was 11th in 21:04.10, and Kenzie Reber was 16yh in 21:42.90. LCS coach Milton Lyons said he put his runners through a tough week so he wasn’t worried about their times this week.“She (Wilkinson) ran slightly faster than she did last year on tired legs,” he said. “The goal for her is to peek at states and try to get as close to that 18-minute mark as, as possible. So that's the biggest goal.”Victory Christian’s Ryleigh McInnes finished 17th in 21:49 as the Storm finished seventh.Lakeland Christian boys repeat as district championsLakeland Christian graduated eight seniors from last year’s district champion teams but that didn’t stop the Vikings from repeating as team champion.Led by junior Kage Goldsmith’s fourth-place finish in 17:50.40, Lakeland Christian finished with 61 points to run away for the easy team win. Indian Rocks Christian was far back with 100 points. It was the seventh district title in school history for the boys cross country team.LCS had four runners finish in the top 20. Seventh-grader Reed Corbett ran 17:59.50 to finish seventh, followed by freshman Ayden Norris in 13th place (18:42.30) and freshman George Asche in 18th place (18:54.90).The Vikings’ No. 5 runner, freshman Luke Glenn, was 21st (19:06.80).“It was great for them, considering we lost eight seniors last year, so I'll take that any day,” Lyons said. “The times were not there, but that I knew that going into it because of the weather, and we had a tough week of practice on purpose because, we're just trying to peak at the right time.”Santa Fe Catholic junior Henry Lauk was the top boys finisher from Polk as he finished third in 17:39.50, about 11 seconds in front of Goldsmith. Victory Christian’s Elijah Gonzales finished with in 18:31.90.In the team competition, Victory Christian finished fifth, and Santa Fe was 13th.This article originally appeared on The Ledger: Charlotte Roy leads All Saints to 1st district cross country title