{"id":218663,"date":"2026-04-04T12:58:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-04T12:58:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/218663\/"},"modified":"2026-04-04T12:58:07","modified_gmt":"2026-04-04T12:58:07","slug":"mokgothu-sets-school-record-wins-5k-at-florida-relays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/218663\/","title":{"rendered":"Mokgothu sets school record, wins 5K at Florida Relays"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\n                    &#13;<br \/>\n                        Story Links&#13;<br \/>\n                        &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n&#13;<\/p>\n<p>                     GAINESVILLE, Fla. \u2013 FGCU&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/fgcuathletics.com\/sports\/mens-cross-country\/roster\/siyabonga-mokgothu\/10144\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"10144\" target=\"_blank\">Siyabonga Mokgothu<\/a> ran a school record 5K time of 14:29.33 to win the event at the Pepsi Florida Relays on Friday night.<\/p>\n<p>Mokgothu, who had the second-fastest time in school history entering the race, topped the old school record of 14:31.89. That mark was originally set exactly 12 years ago to the day by now head coach <a href=\"https:\/\/fgcuathletics.com\/sports\/mens-cross-country\/roster\/coaches\/argeo-cruz\/5396\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"5396\" target=\"_blank\">Argeo Cruz<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>He spent the first 3,000 meters in second place behind Miami (Fla.)&#8217;s Enrique Borrego before overtaking the Hurricane senior runner at the 3,400-meter mark, where he had a half-second lead. From that point, Mokgothu pulled away. At the 4,200-meter mark he held a four-second lead ahead of Borrego and finished nearly 20 seconds ahead of Nova Southeastern&#8217;s Marcus Tortorella and Borrego, who dropped to third behind Tortorella in the final 400 meters.<\/p>\n<p>In the women&#8217;s 5K, <a href=\"https:\/\/fgcuathletics.com\/sports\/womens-cross-country\/roster\/alise-petrova\/10237\" rel=\"smarttag nofollow noopener\" rev=\"10237\" target=\"_blank\">Alise Petrova<\/a> was the runner-up and posted the eighth-fastest time in school history, nearly missing a personal best mark by 0.08 seconds. A sophomore, Petrova recorded her seventh career top-10 finish in a 5K. The native Latvian was in fourth place until the 3,000-meter mark, when she made a move to pass Army West Point&#8217;s Leah Richardson. Over the next 400 meters, Petrova made another move as she passed Army West Point&#8217;s Abigail Garner to move into second place and maintained that position across the finish line.<\/p>\n<p>FGCU will wrap up the spring competition season on Apr. 17 in Atlanta, Georgia when the Eagles compete at the Georgia Tech Invitational. \u00a0<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\n\u00a0<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nFOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\nFor more information on the Eagles, follow FGCU Athletics on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/fgcuathletics\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Instagram<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/FGCUEagles\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">X (Twitter)<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/FGCUAthletics\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Facebook<\/a>, and visit <a href=\"https:\/\/fgcuathletics.com\/index.aspx\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">FGCUathletics.com<\/a>.<br \/>&#13;<br \/>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>                <script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"&#13; Story Links&#13; &#13; &#13; &#13; GAINESVILLE, Fla. \u2013 FGCU&#8217;s Siyabonga Mokgothu ran a school record 5K time&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":218664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29],"class_list":["post-218663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=218663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/218663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/218664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=218663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=218663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=218663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}