2025 North Carolina
Boys State 8A Qualifier (5th Place)
Girls
Girls
State Champs
2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014
Boys
State Champs
2010, 2017, 2022
8A State Championship
On Saturday November 1st 8 GHXC runners competed in the 1st ever 8A State Championship. The race was run as usual at Ivey Redmon Park in Kernersville, but for the 1st time ever North Carolina schools were divided into 8 classifications instead of 4. This move from 8 championship races to 16 caused the state meet to move to 2 days rather than the traditional 1 day event.
The boy’s team earned the 6th and final spot in the state meet last weekend at the East Regional, but hoped to finish in 4th or 5th at the state meet. All the top teams this year were in the eastern half of the state so this meet would be a glorified regional. The course at Ivey Redmon runs slower than most of the other popular courses in the state so times were not expected to be great and that held true. Most runners were about 30 seconds off their time from last week. Normally the race goes out extremely fast, but oddly this was not true today. It was a very tactical race. The Falcons started off slower than many of the teams in the race, but they continued to make moves throughout. Nathan Vo matched his 10th place regional finish with a 10th place state meet finish to earn All-State as a sophomore. Gabe Cardenas also matched his 25th place regional finish by claiming the 25th spot and fellow senior Andrew Leary finished much better in the state meet than a week earlier at regionals as he followed Gabe in 26th place. Senior Adam Mitchell (36th), junior Rafa Dlott (43rd), junior Berk Robottom (44th), and senior Miguel Carrasco Gomez (46th) also helped lead the Falcons to an excellent 5th place team finish.
After an hour or so wait after the boy’s race, sophomore Isabel Short was the lone Falcon girl in the last race of the day. She ran a huge PR of 18:44 at the regional race to qualify as an individual and hoped to take another step forward against the best runners in the state. The gun went off for the final race of the day and a few seconds later it went off again as the race was called back due to runners going down due to contact. After a few moments the runners were up and out on the course for the 8A final. Izzy fought throughout the race and while it was not one of her best times, she represented Green Hope well with a 39th place finish (19:58). It was a good learning experience for her moving forward.
It was good to have Green Hope runners back competing at the state meet after a couple years away and the season overall was a success. The seniors have a lot to be proud of and the underclassmen hopefully got a taste of success and will be willing to put the work in to keep moving forward. Great job all.