The 2A girls race was all Athens Acdemy

This team race was supposed to be close and in the end that's exactly what we got. Both teams were good enough to win it, but I suspect that Providence Christian was able to come out o top simply because they wanted it more as their school has never won a state title. I didn't see any team make any major mistakes so it was probably just that Providence showed just a little more grit to take a 10 point win over Athens Academy. The teams matched up fairly well across the board, but the key seems to have been a stronger race from Providence at the 3rd runner spot to put them over Athens. It was a pretty good race for the final two podium spots, but Fannin County ended up taking 3rd overall while Vidalia took 4th. Fannin did this with front runners and a 4-5 that were able to just do enough to beat a Vidalia team that had a much tighter 1-5 split but just not enough firepower up front. Jeff Davis ran a strong race in 5th place. 

Individually Zechariah Prater was favored to win and that's exactly what he did. I know sometimes people get envious of the big favorite coming into the race, but there's still a lot of pressure to handle when it's "your turn" to win one. You still have to run the race and Prater put up a strong effort that was just too much for Will Deloach to handle. There's no shame in finishing state runner up though and DeLoach still got big points for his team early on and was able to hold off two freshmen in Ruben Ramirez and Koen Verner who took 3rd and 4th respectively. Pepper Davis put up yet another strong individual finish from a Banks County runner as he took 5th overall. 

2A Girls

The Athens Academy girls were favored to get the win in this one and that's exactly what happened. They had the better front runners and enough depth to fend off any challenges as the clear top team in class 2A. But Fellowship Christian still gave them a good race and had a tighter 1-5 pack and even had a faster 5th runner. This thing was not as much of a lock as I thought it was going to be. Fellowship Christian  gave them a really good run but at the end of the day the front runners from Athens Academy proved to be too much for them and that's a tough early deficit to overcome. Savannah Arts came back after winning last year and put up a strong showing in 3rd place despite losing some really good runners to graduation. And Union County was able to snag the final team trophy with a solid showing. 

Individually it was the Maya Davis show. The junior from Athens Academy took a big lead early and never let it go pulling away all the way until the end to win in the biggest margin of victory for the entire meet with her 46 second win. Davis was just on another level that the other girls couldn't quite handle this year as she brought home her first state title. The battle for 2nd place was on though as there were five girls who all had a real shot at this thing. Lindsey Holloway would end up coming out on top to take runner up in just over 20 minutes. Georgia Meredith was 3rd while Leah Nyce gave Savannah arts a very important low stick in 4th place. Lola Hunter rounded out the top 5 in the scoring with her 20:26 that earned her a 5th place medal.