Even slightly stale, the Records are a gold mine of history and statistics. Florida has run a high school state cross-country championship every year since 1947 (and twice in 1953), and for each of those championships the Records give you the winning team, the runner-up team, the indvidual champion, and the individual runner up. If that's not enough, the top ten teams are given for each year. This is all given for each division, even in those bizarre years where there were five different divisions. Venues are included. Winning times are included. There are also lists of the schools with the most team titles, lists of schools with the most individual titles, lists of individuals with the most titles, and some other lists as well. It's quite overwhelming.
And that's a problem. Most people are only interested in their own school, and maybe two or three other schools that they intensely dislike. You can spend the better part of an hour going through the Records with a set of markers, highlighting the statistics that you're actually interested in, and end up with not very much colored in at all.
Well, many years ago, William Goldman went through S. Morgenstern's tiresome novel, The Princess Bride, excised all the pedantic and polemic passages from it, and published a "Good Parts Version" of the book, which has become a classic in its own right (not to mention a major motion picture). In that vein, I've produced a "Good Parts Version" of the Records, specifically for consumption in the Tallahassee area. If your school has won something at the state cross-country meet, then it's here. The same with those other Tallahassee-area schools, the ones you can't stand. If a school isn't listed here, it doesn't mean they never made it to state, it just means that they never put a team or a runner on the winner's platform. Florida State University School, for instance, has been going to the state meet since at least as early as 1963, when they finished runners-up in class 1A. According to the FHSAA they had the first high school team in Tallahassee, but you won't see them on this abridged list because they haven't made it to the winner's circle yet.
I wouldn't use this to compare teams. What a school did back in the 1970s doesn't have a lot of bearing on how good the team is now. I'm not sure that any of this can be a legitimate source of pride either. But if you really want to be proud of what someone else did at your school twenty or thirty years ago, then I'm not going to stop you. People have certainly been proud of stranger things.
Presented, then, as a historical curiosity, the list.
CHILES HIGH SCHOOL
Team Titles
Boys:
FHSAA 3A State Champions, 2003
FHSAA 3A State Champions, 2005
FHSAA 3A State Champions, 2006
Girls:
FHSAA 3A State Champions, 2008
FHSAA 3A State Champions, 2009
Individual Titles
Boys:
2003, Alex Miletich, 3A State Champion
Girls:
2009, Carly Thomas, 3A State Champion
GODBY HIGH SCHOOL
Individual Titles
Boys:
2007, Joe Franklin, 2A State Champion
LEON HIGH SCHOOL
Team Titles
Boys:
FHSAA 3A State Champions 2009
FHSAA 3A State Champions 2008
FHSAA 3A State Champions 2007
FHSAA 2A State Champions 1969
Girls:
FHSAA 3A State Champions 1988
FHSAA 3A State Champions 1987
FHSAA 3A State Champions 1986
FHSAA 3A State Champions 1978
FHSAA 3A State Champions 1977
Individual Titles:
Boys:
2009 Matt Mizereck, 3A State Champion
2008 Matt Mizereck, 3A State Champion
2007 Matt Mizereck, 3A State Champion
1989 Ray Carter, 3A State Champion
1988 Ray Carter, 3A State Champion
1986 Doug Dickinson, 3A State Champion
1976 Herb Wills, 4A State Champion
Girls:
1990 Jessica Scafidi, 3A State Champion
1989 Jessica Scafidi, 3A State Champion
1988 Jessica Scafidi, 3A State Champion
1979 Rosemary Desloge, 3A State Champion
LINCOLN HIGH SCHOOLIndividual Titles
Girls:
1991 Kathy Ward, 4A State Champion
1992 Kathy Ward, 4A State Champion
MACLAY SCHOOL
Team Titles
Boys:
FHSAA 2A State Champions, 1998
FHSAA 1A State Champions, 1999
FHSAA 1A State Champions, 2000
FHSAA 1A State Champions, 2001
FHSAA 1A State Champions, 2002
Girls:
FHSAA 2A State Champions, 1997
FHSAA 2A State Champions, 1998
FHSAA 1A State Champions, 1999
FHSAA 1A State Champions, 2001
FHSAA 1A State Champions, 2005
Individual Titles
Boys:
2002, Ryan Deak, 1A State Champion
2008, Patrick Swain, 1A State Champion
2009, Patrick Swain, 1A State Champion
NORTH FLORIDA CHRISTIAN SCHOOL
Individual Titles
Boys:
1989, Robert Boyd, 1A State Champion
Well done Herb.
ReplyDeleteJoe Mizereck
Thanks, Joe!
ReplyDelete