American Heritage’s Fitzgerald, Aquinas’ Herrera are Broward cross-country runners of the year

American Heritage’s Ashley Fitzgerald once again came oh-so-close to that elusive individual state title. St. Thomas Aquinas’ Anthony Herrera, meanwhile, shaved nearly a minute off his time at the state meet from his performance a year ago.

Those efforts are the reasons Fitzgerald and Herrera are the Miami Herald’s 2022 Broward cross-country runners of the year.

Let’s start with Fitzgerald, a junior who has been at the front of the pack among Broward County runners for the past four years. After finishing in 17th place as an eighth grader in 2019 and ninth as a freshman in 2020, Fitzgerald has finished as the state runner-up in Class 3A each of the past two seasons.

At the state race this year, Fitzgerald led the field through the first mile and was just half a second behind eventual state champion Lillee Tang from Tallahassee Leon at the two-mile mark and finished 2.3 seconds behind Tang with a time of 17:56 — more than 17 seconds faster than her time at state last season and one minute, 19 seconds faster than her first performance as an eighth grader.

“That day, it was anyone’s game,” Fitzgerald said. “It was so close. There was no definite, ‘Oh my gosh, this person’s gonna win.’ ... That was just how the cards played out.”

Still, with one more year of high school left, Fitzgerald’s goal for her senior season is pretty apparent.

“Next year,” Fitzgerald said with a laugh, “we’re breaking the streak next year. Next year will be different. That really motivates me overall. I don’t want to [be runner-up] three years in a row.”

Herrera, meanwhile, doesn’t have a next year.

The senior capped his high school cross country career with the state championship race back in November. Herrera paced all Broward runners at state with a time of 15:59.1, which was good for a 10th-place finish in Class 3A and helped St. Thomas Aquinas to a seventh-place team finish.

“I finally broke 16,” Herrera said. “That was my goal, and I reached it.”

Last year, Herrera finished 39th at state with a time of 16:49.5.

What went into the more than 50-second improvement in his time?

“A change of mind-set, a change of how I was thinking about the race, how I was coming into the race, how I mentally prepare myself before and after,” Herrera said. “I didn’t really change my training that much. I trained hard last year. I trained hard this year. I just really had a positive attitude when going to the just and just pushing myself.”

This story was originally published December 23, 2022 at 7:10 AM.