We look back at some of the\u00a0top high school sports moments of the 2016-2017 school year from around the First Coast area. Whether its\u00a0football, volleyball, swimming or\u00a0cross country, we look back at another amazing year in high school sports.<\/p>\n
We begin with the fall and continue in Part II with the winter and Part III with the spring;\u00a0before releasing our top ten stories of the year.<\/p>\n
January<\/strong><\/p>\n The winter season kicked off with the 10th Annual Cheerleading State Championships Jan 27-28 inside the O’Dome in Gainesville. Who would have thought the First Coast area would dominate the sport so well? Over the two day event, the area had a remarkable\u00a0run of success with 19 area squads finishing in the top five of their respective classes. Bartram Trail, West Nassau, Baldwin, Middleburg all won state titles, while\u00a0Palm Coast, Fleming Island,\u00a0University Christian, Menendez, Clay, Ridgeview and Creekside finished second. Mandarin (3), Oakleaf (4), Union County (5), Providence (5), Trinity (5), Bishop Snyder (3) and\u00a0Orange Park (4) placed in the top five as well.<\/p>\n While her team may\u00a0have not had the success she wanted, senior Miracle Porter had an unbelievable year herself. Porter finished her high school career with 238 career goals including an unbelievable\u00a057 goals and 41 assists for the Matanzas Pirates this year. Her 238 goals surpassed\u00a0Andrea Sellers\u00a0(229) to become the all-time leading scorer in Florida Girls Soccer High School history. For her efforts, Porter was named the Florida Dairy Farmers Girl Soccer Player of the Year\u00a0in addition to signing a letter of intent to play\u00a0at Florida\u00a0Atlantic.<\/p>\n February<\/strong><\/p>\n The first week of February\u00a0allowed girls weightlifting the opportunity to\u00a0show\u00a0off its talents to the rest of the\u00a0state at the FHSAA girls weightlifting state tournament. The First Coast area was\u00a0well represented\u00a0with 13 teams finishing in the top 25. Clay had the best showing finishing fourth, followed by Baker County\u00a0(5), Bartram Trail (7), Fort White (9), Union County (9), Atlantic Coast (15), Middleburg (15), Paxon (17), Interlachen (22), Sandalwood (24), Mandarin (25),\u00a0Bradford (25) and Ribault (25).<\/p>\n It had been eight years since Stanton had advanced past the second round of the playoffs, with one of their best teams in the programs history the Blue\u00a0Devils were determined to prove it on the field and they did. \u00a0Wins over Menendez (4-1),\u00a0Ponte Vedra (1-0) and nemesis Gulf Breeze (3-1) advanced the Blue Devils to their first\u00a0 state semifinal appearance. Having already gone where no\u00a0Blue Devils team had ever gone before the ladies were determined to keep\u00a0it going and did\u00a0with a 2-1 win over Land O’Lakes to advance to the Class 3A state girls soccer championship game. Making their\u00a0first ever state championship\u00a0appearance, the Blue Devils played exceptionally well and played to a scoreless draw with Merritt Island forcing it to be settled in penalty kicks. However, Merritt Island won the title after winning 4-2 in penalty kicks to close out the best season in the Blue\u00a0Devils history.<\/p>\n After coming up a win\u00a0short of making its first appearance in the state semifinals last season, Creekside was determined to finish the goal this past\u00a0season. Road\u00a0wins over Fletcher (2-1), Bartram Trail (2-1)\u00a0and Niceville (1-0) advanced the Knights to their first state semifinal where they\u00a0easily defeated Mitchell 4-1 to make school history. Only state power, St. Thomas\u00a0Aquinas\u00a0 stood in their\u00a0way of bringing home a first state title; however the Knights couldn’t break through the Raiders defense and lost 2-0 in the final.<\/p>\n Longtime coach Frank Pontore is starting\u00a0to\u00a0build a dynasty at Fleming Island winning his second state title at the school in the last five years. The Golden Eagles (24-1-2) captured their second title with a 4-0 win over Miami Doral Feb 18 at Spec Martin Stadium.\u00a0A big reason for the Eagles success was Reed Davis, who scored 50 goals and became the first Eagles player to win the\u00a0coveted Florida Dairy Farmers Mr. Soccer award,\u00a0given to the\u00a0best player in the state.<\/p>\n March<\/strong><\/p>\n Longtime coach Jim Reape continues\u00a0the long standing tradition of Clay wrestling with another top five\u00a0finish at the state meet. Nemesis Lake Highland Prep\u00a0won the team title with 298.5\u00a0points well ahead of Clay, who finished second with 129 points, just ahead of nemesis Cardinal Gibbons\u00a0who finished third with 121 points. A\u00a0big reason why Clay did so\u00a0well was the runner-up finish of\u00a0Keath Sawdow\u00a0(52-7) in the 145 weight class final.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We look back at some of the\u00a0top high school sports moments of the 2016-2017 school year from around the First Coast area. Whether its\u00a0football, volleyball, swimming or\u00a0cross country, we look back at another amazing year in high school sports. We begin with the fall and continue in Part II with the winter and Part III […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":624,"featured_media":28675,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[593],"tags":[303,636],"class_list":["post-28674","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-high-school-sports","tag-top-stories","tag-track-field"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/06\/Stanton-Girls-Soccer.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28674","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/624"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28674"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28674\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/28675"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28674"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28674"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.duvalsports.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28674"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}