- December 26, 2024
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It’s been a banner year for Flagler Palm Coast senior Colby Cronk. He won a state track and field championship, set four school records in two sports and accepted a college football scholarship.
The defensive end committed last spring to play football at North Carolina State and signed with the Wolfpack on Dec. 4. In between his commitment and signing, he won the Class 4A state shot put championship and was the Class 4A runner-up in discus. He played hurt throughout his senior football season but still finished with school records of 27 sacks for the season and 50 for his career. The old career sacks record was 32.5. Cronk had 120 total tackles this season and 283 in his four years playing varsity football.
And yet the highlight of his athletic year might have been in track and field. At the state championships, his school-record shot put of 19.22 meters (63 feet, 0.75 inches) was not only the best in the state in all classifications, but the 10th-best all-time. He also set a new school record in discus with a throw of 183 feet, 11 inches to win the silver.
A relative newcomer in both throwing events, Cronk is “just scratching the surface of the technical aspect,” his coach, David Halliday, said.
FPC’s football team had a phenomenal season in coach Daniel Fish’s second year. After finishing 3-7 in 2023, the Bulldogs went 9-1 during the regular season and hosted a regional quarterfinal against Spruce Creek.
Unfortunately the ending left a sour taste in the Bulldogs’ mouths as game officials from Lakeland mistakenly took a down away from FPC. The Bulldogs were driving deep into Spruce Creek territory in the final seconds, trailing the Hawks 36-35. Third down suddenly became fourth down and the Bulldogs fell short of converting a first down.
“I'm so proud of this group,” Fish said after the game. “It was an amazing turnaround. They established the culture and they made history this year. And I just hate that they had to go out that way.”
One of the reasons for the turnaround was the addition of quarterback Hayden Hayes. The Seabreeze transfer set FPC single-season school passing records for yards (3,068) and touchdowns (34). His six touchdown passes in the Bulldogs’ first game against Spruce Creek on Oct. 25 also set a school record.
Marcus Mitchell, meanwhile, broke the school career rushing record, a mark his late father once owned. He ran for 1,749 yards and 16 touchdowns this season to finish with 4,570 yards and 42 touchdowns in his career.
Four Flagler County high school wrestlers were crowned state champions on March 2 in Kissimmee. It was a historic day for Matanzas High’s Jordan and Mariah Mills who became the first brother and sister to win titles at a state wrestling championship.
Jordan completed a perfect 52-0 season to win the Class 2A 190-pound championship a year after missing the postseason due to shoulder surgery. He dislocated the same shoulder in the title match and overcame a 5-0 deficit to win 8-7 in an ultimate tiebreaker. Mariah went 37-1 and won the 110-pound girls title. Her only loss was to the 10th-ranked wrestler at the Wonder Woman tournament in Missouri.
Flagler Palm Coast wrestlers Christina Borgmann and Joslyn Johnson also made history becoming the first girls to win state titles for FPC, a school rich in wrestling tradition. Borgmann won the 125-pound title, completing a perfect 25-0 season despite missing a month with a shoulder injury. Johnson won the 100-pound title. An escape with three seconds remaining gave her a 4-3 win the final.
The Bulldogs placed second behind girls team champ Hernando despite sending just four wrestlers to the championships. Ana Vilar and Alexa Calidonio won fourth-place medals. Matanzas, the 2023 girls state champ, was third with two other wrestlers winning medals: Tiana Fries, second at 140 pounds and Ani Brown seventh at 190 pounds.
Borgmann and Mariah Mills each added national championships to their expanding resumes, winning titles at High School Nationals on April 7 in Virginia Beach. The pair went on to wrestle for Team USA in Bahrain, helping the U.S. win gold in the AAU/ISF Bahrain Gymnasiade U17 women’s wrestling championships in October. Borgmann won silver and Mills took bronze in their weight classes.
Seventh grader Douglas Seth established himself as one of the fastest middle school distance runners in the country.
He ran the fastest middle school 3-kilometer indoor time in 2024 and 13th fastest all-time — 9:33.40 — at the Florida Middle School Indoor Track Championships on Feb. 10. At the outdoor championships in May, the Buddy Taylor Middle School student who runs for the Imagine Town Center Club team, placed among the top six in two distance events.
Now an eighth grader, Seth, 14, won the club division at the Middle school cross country championships on Oct. 26 and placed 12th out of 325 runners in the 4K race at the Middle School Cross Country National Championships on Nov. 9 in Louisville, Kentucky.
Not to be outdone, Peyton Cerasi is establishing herself as one of the fastest high school freshman distance runners in the state. At the Florida Youth Running Association’s middle school outdoor track championships, she matched Seth’s finishes of fourth place in the 3,000 meters and sixth in the 1,500 meters.
She then handled the transition to high school with ease, winning her first 5K cross country race at the Spikes and Spurs Classic on Aug. 24 at the Flagler County Fairgrounds and leading the FPC girls team to their first-ever championship in their event.
She broke FPC’s school record on Oct. 19 with a time of 18:35 in a Jacksonville meet. She shattered that mark with a time of 18:19.2 to place seventh at the Class 4A state championship Nov. 16 at Apalachee Park in Tallahassee. Three other FPC runners broke 20 minutes to help the Bulldogs to a third-place finish, their best result in program history.
Matanzas softball pitcher Leah Stevens missed her entire sophomore season after suffering a rare stroke caused by a blood clot in the brain's venous sinuses. Stevens was on blood thinners and blood-clot dissolving medications for over a year. During that time she wasn’t even allowed to be on the field during a practice for fear of getting hit in the head.
She was finally cleared on Feb. 26. The next day, she pitched a six-inning one-hitter, striking out 14 of 21 batters. She finished her junior season with an 11-4 record, a staggering 0.87 earned run average and 196 strikeouts in 88.2 innings pitched.
“I think I have a different appreciation for the game now,” she said in March. “I know we can get all caught up in the stats and the numbers, but I really wanted everybody to know that when I'm back on the field I want everyone to have fun, and that's the big thing. That's my main goal out there.”
