Spanish River Invitational Preview: A Course Gets Rick Rothman's Name, and We Ran All Eight Races on Paper

44th Spanish River XC Invitational. Burt Aaronson South County Regional Park, Boca Raton. Hosted by Spanish River High School. Friday, September 18: middle school boys 3K 4:50 p.m., middle school girls 3K 5:15, high school boys 1A/2A 5:45, high school girls 1A/2A 6:15. Saturday, September 19: Race of Champions boys 7:40 a.m., Race of Champions girls 8:05, high school boys 3A/4A 8:35, high school girls 3A/4A 9:05. The course is dedicated at 9 a.m. Saturday. Times are from the meet's information page and are subject to change.

On Saturday morning, between the Race of Champions and the 3A/4A races, Palm Beach County will pull the cover off a sign, and the course at South County Regional Park will officially be the Rick Rothman Cross Country Course.

Rothman founded this meet 44 years ago, designed and built the course in 2004, and coached Spanish River to seven girls' state championships and more than 150 major titles along the way. He has coached U.S. national teams, coached at FAU, and last year went into the National High School Athletic Coaches Association Hall of Fame to go with the four Florida halls of fame that already had him. "This has been my dream since I came to Palm Beach County in 1981," he said when the county announced it. The kids who race Saturday will be the first to run a course that carries his name.

They will do it in front of one of the biggest fields in the state. More than a hundred high school programs are entered across the two days, and nearly fifty middle school teams and clubs, from Key West to Winter Park. The No. 1 boys team in Florida is here. So are three of the other nine teams in our statewide top ten, the top two girls teams in Class 2A, the top girls team in 1A, and the host, which is in the Class 4A top ten on both sides.

We took every program on the entry list and ran each of the meet's races through our Race Simulator, split the way the meet splits them: middle school, 1A/2A, 3A/4A, and the Race of Champions. Every runner is entered on the best thing he or she has run this fall, leveled to a common course. Top seven per team, five score, sixth and seventh displace. One caveat up front on the Race of Champions: it is invitation only, and the invite list had not been published as of Wednesday night. We filled it with the ten best teams on the entry list, boys and girls, by the simulator's own scoring, and we will rerun it the moment the real list is out. Entry lists name teams, not athletes, so every runner below is "if he runs."

About the times. Every mark below is the time the runner actually ran, and where. The last column is what that time is worth at Cecil Field, the reference course for high school, or at Jim Ryun for the middle school 3K, and that is the number the scoring uses. A team needs five runners with a 2026 mark to score; the teams without five are listed after each race. The simulator does not project, so nobody is entered on last November. A dagger marks a time from a course the simulator could not price, entered raw; that matters most for the Broward schools, whose weekday BCAA meets at Heritage Park and Tradewinds run slow and cannot yet be rated, so those teams read worse here than they are.

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Friday, 4:50 p.m. Middle school boys: Ransom or Belen, depending on the clock

This one flips with the toggle. On leveled times Ransom Everglades scores 28 with Nicolas Adler (8th) and Ruslan Lefrak (8th) first and second in the field, both on runs from last week's Palmer Trinity middle school invitational, a course the simulator reads as more than a minute slow. On best times Belen Jesuit scores 18 and puts Jake Rubiera (8th), Aiden Cruz (7th) and Diego Ferer (7th) first, second and third on their Horse Park times, 10:25.7, 10:28.1 and 10:38.4. The simulator reads the Horse Park as a fast course for middle school boys, so those marks give back time, and Ransom's Palmer Trinity marks gain it. Belen's five has two sixth graders in it; Ransom's front two are eighth graders.

Boca Warriors Track Club has the fastest leveled marks in the field after Ransom's two, Banks Stroup (7th) fourth on his 10:44.7 at Nights of Thunder and Logan Minors (7th) and Brayden Milek (7th) inside the first ten, and no fourth or fifth runner with a 3K mark, so they place and do not score. Dylan Leuck of Milers Running Club ran 10:42.7 at Nights of Thunder and is third leveled. South Florida HEAT, Miami Country Day and NSU University are the next three teams, all with five.

The name on the meet's own record board is worth a word. Willie Mckenney set the 3K course record here last year, 10:00.00, running for Genesis. He is a freshman at American Heritage Plantation now, and he is in the 3A/4A race on Saturday, not this one.

Not scored, middle school boys. AIE Charter has four boys with a 3K mark, Boca Warriors three, and Benjamin, Doral Academy and More Runners Corp one each. Most of the rest of the entry list has not run a middle school 3K that is in our database this fall, which is why 37 entered programs produce nine scoring teams: American Heritage Delray, Boca Raton Christian, Coral Springs Charter, Downtown Doral, Gulliver Prep, iMater, Key Largo, Lake Worth Christian, Miami Arts, Palm Beach Elite, Parkway Christian, Pine Crest, Rosarian, Sheridan Hills, both Somerset Academies, Southwest Florida Christian, St. Andrew's, St. Ann, St. Vincent Ferrer, Stride Stars, The Greene School and True North. Basilica School, Gulliver Prep Elementary, Pine Crest Boca Raton, Ruth K. Broad Bay Harbor, Sapps Elite, SLAM Boca Raton, Spanish River Christian, St. Mark's Episcopal and Treasure Coast Classical are not in our database at all.

Friday, 5:15 p.m. Middle school girls: Boca Warriors, and Boucher up front

Boca Warriors Track Club scores 22, placing 1-2-4-7-8, and wins by more than 40 either way. Camila Boucher (8th), the No. 8 middle school girl in Florida on our list, is first in the field on the 11:11.3 she ran at Nights of Thunder, and Arielle Gorlovetzky is second on a Jim Ryun run. This is the club's home meet, and the girls' 3K record here, 11:00.97, belongs to a Boca Warrior, Makaela Morilla, who is on Spanish River's roster now.

Valentina Sarcos (8th), No. 9 on the same list, is the one girl in the field with a real shot at Boucher, and she shows up twice in the table. She won the Palmer Trinity middle school invitational last Wednesday in 12:27.4, listed under Palmer Trinity, and ran 11:12.5 for third at the Horse Park listed under Miami Vice Project, and both are entered. She will run for one of them. Ransom Everglades is second with 63 on a five inside two minutes, Palmer Trinity third, Carrollton fourth.

Not scored, middle school girls. Milers Running Club, NSU University and South Florida HEAT have four girls with a mark, AIE Charter three, Riviera Prep two, Doral Academy and Miami Vice Project one. The rest of the entry list is in the same spot as the boys: no middle school 3K in our database this season.

Friday, 5:45 p.m. 1A/2A boys: Gulliver by a hundred, Arterburn against Ghaffar

Gulliver Prep 2A scores 65, placing 2-6-7-24-26, and the next team is a hundred points back. Kayaan Ghaffar (Jr.), the No. 4 boy in 2A, Adrian Iziliaev (Sr.), No. 9, and Emilio Perez-Garcia (Sr.) are all entered on their Horse Park runs, 16:10.5, 16:28.3 and 16:36.6. Gulliver is second in the class and ninth in Florida, and sent a second group to King of the Hill last week, so this five has not raced together since Ocala.

The individual race is the one to watch. Elijah Arterburn (Atlantic Christian 1A, Sr.) is first in the field on leveled times, on the 16:23.9 he ran to win the Dr. Garcia Bulldog Invite out of 232 on a course the simulator reads as slow, worth about 15:40. He is the No. 2 boy in 1A and the only boy in the class with three rated races, all of them between 16:16 and 16:24. On best times Ghaffar is first, 16:10.5 to Arterburn's 16:16.9 from Pine Crest. They have not raced each other this fall. Benjamin Francis (Highlands Christian 1A, Sr.), No. 8 in 1A, is next on his Dr. Garcia run, then Lucian Burns (Marathon 1A, So.), No. 7, and Michael Gomez (FAU High 2A, Sr.), No. 7 in 2A, who won Kings Academy by 45 seconds last Saturday.

One mark in the top ten needs a flag. Lukas Arrojo (True North 1A, So.) is entered on a 19:09.5 from the Palmer Trinity high school meet in August, which the simulator reads as more than two and a half minutes slow, so it is worth 16:26 to the machine. His best actual time is 17:52.5 at King of the Hill. Palmer Trinity's course is hard, but that rating rests on a handful of runners and it is the softest number in this race.

Second place is a real race. Holy Trinity 1A, third in the class, scores 168 with Zamari Blumenberg, an eighth grader, and Jesus Martinez (Sr.) 13th and 15th. Southwest Florida Christian 1A, fifth in 1A, is 203 with Nash Akers (So.) 12th and then four inside ten places of each other. Pine Crest 2A, eighth in 2A, is 226 with freshman Emilio Tobon 11th. On best times the order behind Gulliver is Southwest Florida Christian, Holy Trinity, Pine Crest, then Wellen Park, which drops to 15th on leveled times because its marks come from the two North Port courses, which the simulator reads as fast and takes time away from. South Florida HEAT 1A, eighth in 1A and the Kings Academy winner, is eighth here.

Not scored, 1A/2A boys. Highlands Christian has four boys with a mark, which is why Francis is scored as an individual; Riviera Prep has two and The Greene School one. Pinecrest Prep and SLAM Boca Raton are on the entry list and not in our database.

Friday, 6:15 p.m. 1A/2A girls: Carrollton, then Holy Trinity and Ransom

Carrollton 2A scores 43, placing 2-5-9-13-14, with a 54-second spread that is the tightest of any full team in the race. Daniela Hernandez (Sr.), the No. 4 girl in 2A, ran 19:16.7 for second at Pine Crest and has not raced since; Gabriella Socarras (Sr.), No. 10, ran 19:25.4 at the Horse Park; Eva Martinez-Lejarza (Fr.) is the third. Carrollton is second in 2A and ninth in Florida on our list, and this is the first time this fall it will see Ransom Everglades, the No. 3 team in the class.

Holy Trinity 1A scores 78, and the front of it is an eighth grader. Taylor Geraghty, the No. 6 girl in 1A, ran 19:42.7 for fifth at the Astronaut Invitational on a slow day, worth about 19:02, and is first in the field on leveled times. Her sister Kelly (Fr.) is eighth. Holy Trinity is the No. 1 team in 1A and has won Astronaut and Indian River. Ransom Everglades 2A is third at 84 on a 77-second spread, with freshman Julianna Hart seventh on her Astronaut run. Then a gap to Cardinal Newman 2A (154) and Westminster Academy 1A (156), whose Noelle Richardson (Sr.) is fourth in the field.

On best times Hernandez is first and Geraghty sixth, and Claire Chanon (Cardinal Gibbons 2A, Jr.) and Giuliana Serra (Cardinal Gibbons 2A, Sr.), No. 6 and No. 8 in the class, are third and fifth on their Pine Crest runs. Cardinal Gibbons is seventh as a team, because after those two the next three are 78th, 80th and 95th, two of them on BCAA times from Markham Park on Tuesday that the simulator cannot price.

Not scored, 1A/2A girls. Pine Crest and Pine School have four girls with a mark, American Heritage Delray and Sheridan Hills three, Lake Worth Christian and North Broward Prep two, Highlands Christian, Somerset Canyons and The Greene School one, Riviera Prep none. Basilica School is on the entry list and not in our database.

Saturday, 7:40 a.m. Race of Champions boys: our ten, and Belen by eighty

Again: this field is ours, not the meet's. The ten best boys teams on the entry list by the simulator are Belen Jesuit, Spanish River, Columbus, Jupiter, Doral Academy, Gulliver Prep, Braddock, Jensen Beach, Holy Trinity and Southwest Florida Christian, and that is who is scored here until the real invite list is out. If the meet's list differs, the button below still works: pull a team out, add one in, and the scores update.

Belen Jesuit 3A scores 21 on 1-2-3-4-11. Armando Cruz (Sr.) is first on his 15:06.0 from Cecil Field, the fastest raw time by an FHSAA boy this fall; Marcelo Mantecon (Sr.), the No. 1 boy in Florida, is second on his Horse Park win; Jack Michalak (Jr.) and Liam Salom (Sr.) are third and fourth on Cecil Field times. Then a real race for second: Spanish River 4A 102, Columbus 4A 103, Jupiter 4A 117, Doral Academy 4A 125, Gulliver Prep 2A 131. Five teams inside 29 points, and on best times it is Doral second, Gulliver third, Columbus fourth and Spanish River fifth, because Spanish River and Jupiter are entered on the Dr. Garcia course and Doral and Gulliver on the Horse Park.

The course record is 14:57.70, set by Belen's Adam Margoulas in 2021, and the meet record is Ryan Pickering's 14:57.67 from 2010. Cruz and Mantecon are the two boys in Florida with a shot at either.

Saturday, 8:05 a.m. Race of Champions girls: six teams inside fifty points

Same rule: our ten, by the simulator, are Carrollton, Doral Academy, Lourdes, Holy Trinity, Ransom Everglades, St. Thomas Aquinas, Cardinal Newman, Westminster Academy, Spanish River and Winter Park. Rerun it when the meet publishes its list.

This is the closest team race of the weekend on paper. Carrollton 2A 73, Doral Academy 4A 97, Lourdes 3A 100, Holy Trinity 1A 110, Ransom Everglades 2A 121, St. Thomas Aquinas 4A 122. Six teams, four classes, 49 points. Carrollton wins it on depth, five inside 54 seconds with nobody in the first three; Doral and St. Thomas Aquinas have the front and not the back. On best times the top three is Carrollton, Lourdes, Doral.

Nicole Lewis (Doral Academy 4A, Jr.) is first in the field on 18:43.0 from the Horse Park, and Elise Brown (St. Thomas Aquinas 4A, So.) second on 18:50.0 from Cecil Field, seven seconds apart on the leveled clock. They are seventh and eighth in 4A on our list and have not raced each other this fall; Brown won King of the Hill by 74 seconds last Thursday. Geraghty is third, Hernandez fourth, and St. Thomas Aquinas's Kendall Parrott (So.) fifth on 19:16.0 from Cecil Field. Doral over Carrollton is a standing head-to-head on our statewide list, seventh against eighth at the Horse Park; if they meet here, that settles it either way.

Saturday, 8:35 a.m. 3A/4A boys: the host against Columbus, Jupiter and Doral

If the Race of Champions takes the teams we think it takes, this race loses its top six and becomes a different meet. Scored on the full 3A/4A entry list, as the meet lists it, Belen Jesuit 3A scores 25 with the first four across the line, and the race behind them is Spanish River 4A 125, Columbus 4A 128, Jupiter 4A 145 and Doral Academy 4A 147, four teams inside 22 points.

The host is the story. Spanish River is eighth in 4A and first out of the statewide ten, and is entered on the Dr. Garcia Bulldog Invite two weeks ago, which it won: freshman Will Irby first for the team in 17:05.0, then Erik Moss (Jr.), Spencer Singerman (Jr.) and Aiden Sandmaier (So.) inside 25 seconds of him, with Colton Langley (Jr.) on his Pine Crest time. It has not raced since. Columbus is sixth in 4A and eighth in Florida, won King of the Hill with 22 last Thursday, and Nicholas Garcia (Jr.) won that race out of 339 in 16:43.1. Doral is fifth in 4A and sixth in Florida, has not raced since Ocala, and Martin Fernandez (Sr.), first out of the 4A individual ten, is the best 4A runner in either race. Jupiter has Matthew Ward (Sr.) and Titus Fike (Sr.) inside the first fifteen on Dr. Garcia times. Columbus and Doral are ranked above Spanish River, none of the three has raced Spanish River this fall, and a home win over either moves the host.

Two younger names in the individual race. Willie Mckenney (American Heritage Plantation 3A, Fr.), who owns the middle school course record here, ran 16:42.0 at Dr. Garcia, worth about 15:58, and is fifth in the field, first among freshmen. Miguel Gutierrez Guzman (Suncoast 3A, So.) is seventh on the same course. Kevin Aguilar (Mater Lakes 3A, Sr.) ran 16:00.0 at Cecil Field and is sixth. Antario Berek (Vero Beach 4A, Jr.) and Dylan Stacey (Centennial 4A, Jr.) are entered on Indian River times.

Not scored, 3A/4A boys. Dillard and West Boca Raton have four boys with a mark, Oak Ridge and Port St. Lucie two; Douglas, Flanagan and Miami Southridge have no 2026 mark in our database. The Broward public schools that do score, Cypress Bay, South Plantation, Pembroke Pines Charter, Taravella and West Broward among them, are entered largely on BCAA weekday times that the simulator cannot price, so they sit lower here than they will on Saturday. South Plantation's David Lazo (Sr.) ran 16:07 at state last fall and is entered on a 17:44 from Heritage Park.

Saturday, 9:05 a.m. 3A/4A girls: Lourdes, Doral and St. Thomas Aquinas inside 18 points

Scored as the meet lists it, Lourdes 3A 65, Doral Academy 4A 67, St. Thomas Aquinas 4A 83. Lourdes wins on three girls in a row, Sofia Jimenez (So.), Alessandra Perez (Sr.) and Marisa Mantecon (So.), sixth, seventh and eighth in the field. St. Thomas Aquinas beat Lourdes at King of the Hill last Thursday, 32 to 57, with Jimenez and Mantecon second and third behind Brown, so on the grass the order is the other way, and that result stands on our lists until they meet again. Lourdes is fifth in 3A; Doral and St. Thomas Aquinas are sixth and fifth in 4A. If the Race of Champions takes all three, the 3A/4A race is Spanish River 4A's to lose, and it is a strange favorite.

Spanish River is third in 4A and tenth in Florida on a projection, and the projection is the whole team. Alba Antunez-Perez (Sr.), the No. 10 girl in 4A, has started twice this fall and not finished either race, and Lailani Levy (So.), Makaela Morilla (So.) and Julia D'Emic (Jr.), the next three on the ranked five, have DNFs at Pine Crest and no finish since. Without them the team is fourth here at 140, on freshman Adriana Perrette, Brooke Thunberg (So.) and Olivia Downes (Jr.). With them, on last November's times, it is a top-three team in either race. Their home meet is a good place to find out. Winter Park 4A, down from Orlando, is fifth with Bella Sacks (Sr.) and Kathryn Ryan (So.) ninth and tenth; Jensen Beach 3A and South Fork 3A are sixth and seventh; Jupiter 4A has the tightest five in the race, 56 seconds, and is eighth.

Samantha Helfant (Palm Beach Central 4A, Sr.) is third in the field on the 19:20.9 she ran to win Kings Academy by 85 seconds, her third straight win, worth about 18:57, and Palm Beach Central does not have five, so she runs for herself. Lewis and Brown are first and second. The meet record, 17:12.86 by Boca Raton's Pia Beaulieu in 2020, is safe.

Not scored, 3A/4A girls. Forest Hill, Homestead, Taravella and Vero Beach have four girls with a mark; Dillard, Mourning, Pembroke Pines Charter and West Broward three; Oak Ridge, Port St. Lucie and South Plantation two; Olympic Heights one; Douglas none. Dillard is the one that matters: sixth in 3A on a projection, with Shynah Collins (So.) at 19:08 from state last fall. Collins has a DNF and no finish this season, and only three Dillard girls have a 2026 mark, all from BCAA meets the simulator cannot price. If Dillard runs its five, it belongs with the top three.

What the weekend can do to the rankings

• Four of the statewide top ten boys teams are here. Belen is first, Doral sixth, Columbus eighth, Gulliver ninth, and Spanish River is first out. A team never ranks behind a team that beat it that week, so whichever of Doral, Columbus, Gulliver and Spanish River finishes first behind Belen holds that place over the others until they meet again.
• Doral over Carrollton is a head-to-head, not a figure. Eighth and ninth on the girls' statewide list, on the Horse Park finish. If both are in the Race of Champions and Carrollton wins, they swap; if they are in different races Saturday, nothing changes.
• Arterburn against Ghaffar, if it happens. The No. 2 boy in 1A and the No. 4 boy in 2A have not shared a line this fall. Neither result moves a class list, but it tells us something about both.
• Lewis against Brown. Seventh and eighth in 4A, seven seconds apart on the leveled clock, and a race between them sets the order until November.
• Spanish River's girls stop being a projection. If Antunez-Perez finishes, the team is ranked on a race for the first time. If she does not, the (P) stays and the team is judged on the five that ran.
• Holy Trinity's girls are No. 1 in 1A on wins over 1A fields. Carrollton and Ransom are the two best 2A teams in the state. Second to either is fine; a win over both moves them into the statewide ten.
• Geraghty and Mckenney. An eighth grader who is sixth in 1A and a freshman with a course record on this grass. The Best Young Runner awards are the meet's; the class lists are ours, and both can move on Friday and Saturday.

Notes on the ratings

• A course rating is the gap between what runners ran at that meet and what the same runners ran at last year's state final, re-anchored so that Cecil Field, the biggest sample of the season, sits at zero. Boys use the mean of that gap; girls use the median, and where the girls' sample is small the boys' figure is scaled instead. Middle school 3K times are priced against the 2025 FLYRA state meet and anchored to Jim Ryun.
• One change this week: a runner more than five minutes off his or her own state time is no longer counted in a course rating. That kind of gap is an injury or a jog, not a course, and one such runner had a Broward course rated as three and a half minutes slow.
• The ratings doing the most work here: the Dr. Garcia Bulldog Invite, read about 45 seconds slow for boys and close to even for girls, which carries Spanish River, Jupiter, Arterburn and Mckenney; the Horse Park, read a shade fast for high school and about 45 seconds fast for middle school boys, which carries Belen, Doral, Gulliver, Lourdes and Carrollton; King of the Hill, about 20 seconds slow; Kings Academy, about 20 seconds slow for boys, on a small sample; and the Palmer Trinity meets, both read well over a minute slow, on small samples.
• The BCAA weekday meets at Heritage Park, Tradewinds and Markham, the Lightning Invites series and the Jupiter Invite could not be priced from this season's data and are entered raw, marked with a dagger.
• The Rothman course has no 2026 rating because nobody has raced it this season. These are Cecil Field equivalents, not predictions of Saturday's clock.
• The simulator recomputes its own ratings from the snapshot, so it can differ from the numbers in our weekly rankings posts by a few seconds, and our lists also apply head-to-head results the simulator does not.
• Grades and classifications are 2026-27. Middle schoolers on private-school varsity teams are eligible and scored as entered. Out-of-class entries, Jupiter Christian 1A in the 3A/4A races and Miami Carol City 2A and the Independent programs in the 1A/2A races, are scored where the meet put them.

The same treatment for earlier meets: Nights of Thunder, the Buchholz Bobcats Classic, the Florida Horse Park, Pace, St. Cloud and Estero. Results, and what two days in Boca do to the lists, early next week. Congratulations, Coach Rothman.