Old pals, new rivals
When Windermere opened in 2017, it siphoned students from West Orange — but cross country runners retain friendships
were less than 1,200 meters left in the boys cross country Lake Louisa Preseason Classic for West Orange senior Cole Miller.
He was in third place and closing in on the leader when he slowed down to shout at the runner next to him. “ONIX, PICK IT UP!” Miller shouted. It was junior Onix Ortiz who received an earful of encouragement from Miller to pass the first place runner. But Miller wasn’t cheering on a teammate, as you might expect.
Ortiz was running for Windermere High School — which became West Orange’s newest rival when it opened in August 2017.
“I want to see [Ortiz] run fast as well as help me,” Miller said last week.
Miller, Ortiz and other former teammates and good friends will race each other again Friday when West Orange, Windermere and other top area teams compete for state meet berths during the Class 4A, Region 1 championship meet at Santa Fe Community College in Gainesville.
Windermere was built to relieve overcrowding at West Orange. Its creation forced hundreds of students and middle schoolers who were previously zoned to West Orange to transfer to new surroundings.
Close friends, like Miller and Ortiz, were split up. Valuable freshmen for West Orange moved on to become key components of the first Windermere cross country team, which got off to a strong start and has continued its emergence as one of the area’s best.
Still, the bonds remain unbroken. Even Windermere runners who never attended West Orange have gotten to know members of the West Orange squad because of the proximity of the two schools and mutual friendships.
“It’s a rivalry but at the same time, we finish the race [and] we’ll go over [to Windermere], shake their hands and hug each other,” Miller said.
The schools are about five miles apart and are in the same conference, district, region and class for cross country — so they’ve raced against each other regularly. Windermere finished first, with the Warriors second at both the Metro West Conference championships and 4A, District 3 meet over the past two weeks.
Both are projected to be in the running for a top five region finish in a chase that includes defending state champion Oviedo and darkhorse Lake Mary. The top six teams advance to the Nov. 10 state meet in Tallahassee.
It’s possible that both Windermere and West Orange could achieve their first state top 10 finish on the same day. That would be remarkable considering West Orange has never sent a boys team to the state meet.
The Wolverines’ best runners — Ortiz, juniors Liam Pirie, Noah Ellenback and Carter Rowe and sophomore Mason Taylor — might still be at West Orange had Windermere’s construction been approved by the Orange County Commission for a later date instead of being expedited. In that universe, West Orange could have become 4A’s best boys cross country team.
Neither team has let the “what ifs” slow their pace.
“You always have to think about what you have right now rather then what you had before and use that to push you every single day,” West Orange senior PierrePaul said.
Pierre-Paul ran cross country with Ellenback and had Ortiz as a track teammate at West Orange. They still hang out, play video games against each other and someThere times train together.
Miller said he’s happy he gets to cheer on and push his friends in different jerseys because if Windermere’s stars were still wearing orange and blue, the Warriors would have no opponent to push them to their potential.
“At the end of the day, I’d always rather have that competition, knowing that going into a race you might not win it, you have to work harder to [win],” Miller said. “But if we had Onix, Noah, even some of the newer guys like Mason and Liam, it would’ve been a lot easier winning meets.”
Even the schools’ head coaches have ties to the other team.
Adolph Morris is in his first year as West Orange’s coach, but he was an assistant coach for track and cross country when Ortiz and Ellenback were at the school, so he said he “knew what he was losing”.
Morris said he still treats those two runners and the other familiar Windermere faces like his own.
“There’s no animosity or anything like that,” Morris said. “I don’t stop helping them just ’cause they’re not at [West Orange]. It’s a friendly rivalry with them.”
Windermere coach Brian Boylan handled the initial challenge of getting transfers and other new runners to buy-in to a new program and overcome the thoughts of leaving West Orange. The Wolverines qualified for state in their debut 2017 season and placed 17th.
“I told them we’re setting traditions now, traditions now that will be at the school 40 years from now so you guys are the founding fathers,” Boylan recalled.
Against West Orange, it’s more like brothers.
“At the beginning of the race, we’ll have this strong tension between us, but during the race we push and shove each other,” West Orange junior Rajay Preddie said with a laugh. “But after the race it’s like, ‘Hey buddy, what’s up? How was the race?’ ”