Nike-Fleet Feet Coach Wood Recap

                                  

                    Milton's Nathan Reich makes a late surge powering  to a 2nd place finish  Image by Pinion Photography

      I don't rank All-Class or 6A but word is this meet is going to shake the Rankings up on the upper echelon. I have no inside information on what squads ran full strength, but Marietta's Boys brought it as a team scoring 111 points to seize the Championship trophy over top ranked Mill Creek, St.Pius and many others. Ben Pleak and Jake Bagwell ran together across the line placing 9th (15:58) and 10th (16:00) to lead the Blue Devils to the win. It was an intense battle for the individual title as Austin Sprague of St.Pius emerged victorious with a sharp 15:44 holding off Milton's Nathan Reich in 15:47 followed closely by Drew Kelly of Roswell in 15:50 and  Arman Rehmann from Norcross who led their squad's charge to a 3rd place team effort. Mill Creek came out on top of Norcross by one point with Eric Westog leading the Hawks placing 8th overall in 15:58  St.Pius and Brookwood (who continues to improve every race) were both within hailing distance of 2nd/3rd  grabbed 4th and 5th in the team scoring. Other individuals cracking sub 16 on a course that ran much faster than last year were Daniel Navarro of Marist placing 5th in 15:57 and Newton's Alex Grady .06 back as they crossed the mat almost simultaneously with Parkview's Nick Schofer a couple strides back in 15:58  


                                            
                  Allie Buchalski of John's Creek (l) and Annie Kelly of Milton duel in the Championship race  Image by Pinion Photgraphy
 
            The gap is closing in 6A Girls (if) everyone was healthy and ran full strength.  It was quite a race individually and for the top 3 team places and Walton again emerged with the win, but only by 12 points and on this day Brookwood was stronger 1-7...but only the top mattered today. The Lady Raiders placed their top 5 in between postions 4-21 led by Alexa Womack's 18:27 but Walton's 4 and 5 runners (Katie Sanders and Christine Gnecco provided the winning margin. The Lady Broncos stashed 2 runners in the top 10 including Quandra Shanks in 6th (18:42) and Ashley Buda in 9th at 19:03  Milton ran very well placing 3rd behind ace Annie Kelly as she placed 2nd overall in 18:02  4A Marist had a strong race placing 4th behind Morgan Ilse's 3rd place finish in 18:27  Allie Buchalski from John's Creek has come into her own the past month becoming the #1 female harrier All Classes and she flirted with cracking sub 18 ending her journey at the finish line at 18:02 Other runners going sub 19 this morning were Peyton Thomas of Roswell placing 5th in 18:39 and Lambert's Leanne Zimmer in 7th at 18:54  It looks now like 6A Girls State is going to be interesting...