Florida State Championship series #8 – Santos Trails – Ocala, Fl

Great wrap up for the series, cool in the morning and mild sunshine during most of the day, couldn’t have asked for a better weather setting. The Santos trails have been around since the early 90’s and despite some revisions along the way it still has that old school feel to it in many sections, which is to say tight technical and busy. The loop laid out for this years race featured many of those “techy” (or is it “techie”) type sections and the buzz was that it required a lot of concentration to race mistake free. Our thanks to the Ocala Mountain Bike Association or OMBA for the building and maintaining of the system.

Being that the last race of the series it is also a required race (meaning it can’t be dropped or made up)  there was extra pressure on the riders in the hunt for a good season finish or championship. Also there were plenty of close points battles to be had in many of the classes, so when the race was over there was finally a sense of relief for the competitors and the attention turned to the awards banquet later that same day.

In the men’s elite class it was a knock down drag out battle between locals Ryan Woodall (points leader) and Jack Mizzoni, with Jack owning the bragging rights when it was all said and done. In the women’s elite it was Darla Woodall taking the win and along with it the title over last years champ Yerany Morejon Gonzales.

Team “Muddy Santos Schredders / Santos Bike shop” came away with the points lead and the championship and the Zboys $50 fast lap award went to Dick McDonald in the men’s 60+ 1/2 class and Darla Woodall in the women’s XC-1.

The above mentioned banquet was held at the College of Central Florida and aside from the many eligible awardees in each class (5 deep including the youth classes) there were special awards for the following…

ROY (rider of the year) male – Ryan Woodall

ROY (rider of the year) female – Darla Woodall

BSC (best supporting cast) – Stephanie Karras

ESPO (sportsmanship, named in memorial for Jeff Esposito) – Adam Coyman

Most Improved Female – Darla Woodall

Most Improved Male – Eric Oleson

Most Improved Junior – Sebastian Triado

Congratulations to all and hope everyone has a fantastic holiday season!

Next event is the El Largarto  FLE#1 in Lakeland on 1-24/25-26, hope to see everyone there!