She Won This Meet as a Second Grader. Now in Seventh, Reese McGovern Is Belleview's Medalist at FLYRA State

Reese McGovern is in seventh grade, and her history with the FLYRA state cross country championships already runs five years. As a second grader she won the elementary race, and as a third grader she helped the Ocala Distance Project win the state team title, her club says. On Saturday, Oct. 31, she lined up at Holloway Park in Lakeland in a Belleview Middle School singlet and, the club says, left as the only medalist among the middle school runners from Belleview and Osceola Middle School, the only Marion County public schools in Saturday's results.

Nineteenth in a field of 282

The public school girls 3K went off at 8:20 a.m. under cloudy skies, at 76 degrees with an 8 mph wind. McGovern covered the course in 12:05.8, a 6:30 mile pace, to finish 19th of 282, according to the official results. Only seven of the 18 girls ahead of her were seventh graders; the rest but one were eighth graders, and Brianna Motycka of Liberty Pines Academy, an eighth grader, won in 10:26.0.

The climb shows in the results from the past three years. Two years ago, running for the Ocala Distance Project, McGovern was 46th in 13:08.6. Last year, in her first Belleview season at this meet, she was 24th in 12:01.2. Those two races combined public school and club runners, while this year's was public schools only, so the places do not compare exactly. Earlier this fall, she won the middle school 3K at the Wildwood Invitational.

Two sisters, one singlet

She did not make the trip alone. Her sister, eighth grader Rylee McGovern, also trains with the Ocala Distance Project and also runs for Belleview. Rylee was 91st on Saturday in 13:23.2, just 2.2 seconds behind seventh grader Twyla Martin, who was 90th in 13:21.0, a 27-second improvement on her time here last year. Lindy Shute (224th, 15:36.4) and sixth grader Ryleigh Robinson (266th, 17:19.8) completed the scoring five, and Belleview finished 19th of 30 teams with 521 points. Tavares Middle School won the team title with 27.

Osceola's small team, and the boys' big drops

Osceola sent four runners. In the girls race, eighth graders Lowyn Yancey (127th, 13:50.4) and Hailey Tanuis (211th, 15:21.1) ran as individuals, without the five finishers a team score requires. In the public school boys 3K at 9 a.m., where 323 finished, a pair of Osceola seventh graders finished less than two seconds apart and ahead of every Belleview boy: Anthony Prisciandaro was 134th in 12:13.1 and Milan Rodriguez 139th in 12:14.8. Prisciandaro ran 13:12.7 at this meet a year ago, so he took 59.6 seconds off.

Belleview put seven boys across the line, led by eighth grader Tanner Dorschied, 178th in 12:38.9. The biggest drop on the team belonged to eighth grader Aharon Nadeau, who also trains with the Ocala Distance Project: 220th in 13:08.0, 65.5 seconds faster than last year. Owen Plotner (259th, 13:34.3) cut 33.9 seconds and Ethan Benavidas (232nd, 13:16.7) cut 13.1. Connor Labazzetta (254th, 13:31.8), Tevin Issac (269th, 13:44.2) and Luca Aguila (301st, 14:35.8) rounded out the group. The results list no team standings for that race.

For McGovern, Martin, Prisciandaro and Rodriguez, all seventh graders, there is still another year of middle school racing ahead.

The younger Marion County runners had their own day on Friday, when River Smith won a K-2 title by the smallest of margins; that race is in our full FLYRA state report. For more local running, see our Ocala running guide.

Sources: official Elite Timing results for the FLYRA championships in 2026, 2025 and 2024. McGovern's medal, her second-grade win, the third-grade team title, the sisters' relationship and their club training come from the Ocala Distance Project; no official results page for the two earlier races could be opened for this article. Disclosure: the club is coached by Darrin DeTorres, who also owns Only In Ocala. AI tools helped gather the sources and draft this page; each fact was checked against those sources before publishing.