Vanguard won the Marion Athletic Conference boys' title for the 28th straight year and the girls' title for the 24th, all under coach James Travieso. Christopher Taylor won the boys' race in 16:30.0, Lyla Hallick led a one-through-six girls' sweep for a perfect 15, and South Marion scored as a team for the first time.
Marion Athletic Conference Cross Country Championships, Belleview High School, Belleview, Saturday, October 24, 2026
Twenty-eight and twenty-four. Vanguard won the boys' title at the Marion Athletic Conference championships on Saturday for the 28th year in a row, and the girls won for the 24th straight year. The girls did it with a perfect score: 15 points, Vanguard runners first through sixth.
Every one of those titles has come under the same coach, James Travieso. Classes come and go. The banner stays the same.
Boys: Taylor wins, Vanguard scores 20
Christopher Taylor (Vanguard, So.) came in with the fastest time in the field, 15:56 at New World a week earlier, and he ran like it. He won in 16:30.0, ten seconds clear of his teammate Trevor Berquist (So.), who was second in 16:40.2. Taylor was 10th at this meet a year ago. His winning time was a couple of seconds faster than the 16:32.6 that won it last fall.
The only runner to split Vanguard's front group was the host school's Asher Inman (Belleview, So.), third in 16:46.3. Inman was seventh here as a freshman. Lachlan Bryniarski (Vanguard, So.), sixth for Belleview a year ago, was fourth in 16:55.7.
Brooklyn Smith (North Marion, Jr.) was fifth in 17:05.1. He was 13th here last year, 43 seconds slower. Jacob Rogers (Vanguard, Sr.), last year's runner-up, was sixth in 17:09.3, and Cooper Gumpert (Vanguard, So.) closed out the scoring five in seventh in 17:21.0.
That is a Vanguard 3A five of 1-2-4-6-7 for 20 points, with less than 51 seconds from first to fifth. Aidan Bone (Sr.) and Alexander Lammens (Sr.) were 10th and 11th, so the Knights' sixth and seventh beat every other team's third runner.
Belleview 3A was second with 60 behind Inman, Kaden Fernandez (Sr.) in eighth in 17:29.3 and Chapman Stewart (Jr.) in 12th. West Port 4A was third with 70, led by Jordan Rios (So.) in ninth in 17:35.9 and Gavin Smith (Jr.) in 13th. North Marion 3A was fourth with 100.
South Marion 4A was fifth with 135, and that is its own story. The school is new, and this was its first team score at the conference meet; it did not have a full team here last year. Jameson McNulty (Sr.) led the Bears in 20th in 19:11.5, followed by Raymel Rosell (Jr.) in 30th, with Dillon Jurcy (Fr.), Kamal Granger (Jr.) and Alexander Mesidor (Sr.) completing the first five. Seven South Marion boys finished. Every program on this list started somewhere.
Girls: Hallick by 43 seconds, Vanguard one through six
Lyla Hallick (Vanguard, So.) won the girls' race in 18:54.8, nearly 43 seconds ahead of the field. She was third at this meet as a freshman, running for Forest, in 20:05.6. This fall she has won Rockledge and the Craig Speziale Invitational and ran 17:55 at New World.
Behind her came five more Knights. Reese Cartwright (Sr.) was second in 19:37.4, more than a minute and a half faster than the 21:10.1 she ran for sixth here last year. Cierra Mills (Sr.) was third in 19:50.3. Annalise Hallick (Fr.), Lyla's cousin, was fourth in 20:14.6 in her first conference meet. Natalie Lammens (So.) was fifth in 21:41.5 and Anya Bryniarski (Fr.) sixth in 22:11.4.
Five runners, five places, 15 points. It does not get any lower than that.
Kayla Blakey (North Marion, Sr.) was the first runner from another school, seventh in 22:22.4. She was 12th here last year in 24:12.7, so she took nearly two minutes off. Rylee Vilela (West Port, So.) was eighth in 22:36.6 and Maggie Lorick (Belleview, So.) ninth in 23:07.0.
North Marion 3A was second with 66, West Port 4A third with 71 and Belleview 3A fourth with 90. Dunnellon 2A, Forest 4A and Lake Weir had girls in the race but not enough for a team score.
In the junior varsity boys' race, West Port took the first six places for a perfect 15 of its own.
A conference that sends runners on
The Marion Athletic Conference has always been hard to win as an individual, and the list of runners who came out of it shows why. A few of them, the state champions who kept going and the ones who reached the national level:
- Steven Hassen, Vanguard. Florida 3A cross country champion in 2001 and 2002 and 3A 3200 champion in 2002 and 2003. He placed 13th at the Foot Locker national cross country final as a senior and was runner-up in the 3200 at the 2003 Nike Indoor Nationals in 8:56, then ran at the University of Florida.
- Kelly Parrish, Vanguard. A multiple-time state champion in cross country and on the track, a top-three national finisher in the two mile and Gatorade's Florida girls track and field Player of the Year in 2004-05.
- Tori Lawson, Vanguard. Won a state title on the track, then ran five seasons at South Alabama, where she earned all-Sun Belt honors.
- Elizabeth Mulford, Vanguard. Won 3A state titles in cross country and the 3200 in her senior year, then went on to run at Liberty.
- Anne-Marie Blaney, Belleview. She became UCF's first distance All-American, earning honors in the 10,000 at the 2016 NCAA outdoor meet and in the 5,000 at the 2017 NCAA indoor meet. She ran for Team USA at the 2019 World Cross Country Championships, went into the UCF Athletics Hall of Fame in 2024 and runs professionally for the Hansons-Brooks Distance Project.
- Leigha Torino, North Marion. Marion County's girls cross country Runner of the Year in 2015 and 2016. At Duke she finished ninth in the 800 at the 2021 NCAA indoor championships for second-team All-America honors, then spent a graduate year at Virginia Tech, where she won an ACC indoor title on the distance medley relay and earned All-America honors again in that event.
Taylor, Berquist, Inman, Bryniarski and both Hallicks are all sophomores or younger. This list may need updating.
What's next
For most Marion County runners the conference meet is the last regular-season race. Districts are next, then regionals, then the state championships in November. Full results for every runner, plus each athlete's season and career bests, are in our results database.
Results: ASP Timing, via the meet's official results. Alumni facts from the athletes' college bios (University of Florida, South Alabama, Liberty, UCF, Duke and Virginia Tech), UCF Alumni, and Gatorade Player of the Year.
Photos: Marion Athletic Conference Championships, Belleview High School, October 24, 2026, by Darrin DeTorres.