The East Ridge High School girls cross country team competed in the West Orange High School Invitational in Winter Garden on Saturday morning. This annual tradition has often brought the Knights both team and individual success. In both 2023 and 2024, the Knights were the team champions. This season, they sought to complete the trifecta.  This season there were a couple of minor changes to West Orange’s course. The start and finish were moved from the practice fields into the football stadium. Also, this change lessened the number of tight angled turns, which can help runners shave a few seconds off their times. However, most of the course from previous years was still intact, to include the two large loops of the back of the campus. The runners then pushed through a long straightaway and into the stadium for an approximate 60m track finish.

(Veronica Peterson paces the field and would end up winning the event. Photo Credit – South Lake Photography.)

Girls from fourteen complete teams throughout Central Florida participated in the West Orange High School Invitational on Saturday.  The varsity girls race started at 7:15 AM. The start of the race took the girls across the turf of West Orange’s football field, out the gates, and onto the course.

For the second time this season, senior Veronica Peterson was the first Knight to cross the finish line. Veronica quickly made her way into the front portion of the large field of runners and held her position throughout the duration of the race. At the first mile mark, she was clocked at approximately 6:10, as she positioned herself between two sizable packs of runners. The pack slightly ahead of her consisted of some of the area’s other top runners, including district rivals from Lake Nona, Horizon, and West Orange. Veronica kept some of that pack in sight for the remainder of the race, as she finished in a time of 20:14 and placed ninth overall out of a field of 115 varsity girls. This was Veronica’s second fastest time of the season and her result from Saturday is now currently the tenth fastest time set by a Knight at the West Orange Invitational in East Ridge’s school history.

(East Ridge High School has been dominant this season.)

The pack in close proximity behind Peterson consisted predominantly of four of her teammates. Freshman Hortance Sallault ran at the front of the pack for the majority of the race. Hortance pushed the tempo a bit more this week, which prompted her teammates to push, as well. Her and her teammates were able to keep Veronica in their lines of sight for some of the long straightaways. Hortance was the second Knight to cross the finish line, taking tenth place overall and clocking a time of 20:29 – a new career/season personal best by twelve seconds. Her new personal best moved her into the eleventh spot in East Ridge High School’s All-Time Fastest Girls list.

Senior Adriana Mustin, junior Taylor Walker, and junior Jessie Volz claimed eleventh place, twelfth place, and fourteenth place, respectively! Adriana and Taylor sprinted it out against each other in the short track finish. Adriana clocked a finish time of 20:37.4 while Taylor clocked a time of 20:37.8! Both Adriana and Taylor improved by nearly a minute and a half from their performances at West Orange last season. Volz, as the final scorer for the team, clocked a 20:52 finish time – an improvement of nearly three and a half minutes from her performance at West Orange last season.

Overall it was a great performance from the lady Knights. East Ridge High will compete at the Ocoee Cross Country Invitational at Ocoee High School on Saturday September 27th.