Green Hope Cross Country

The Falcons ran in their 1st 5K invitational of the year on Saturday, August 25th at McAlpine Park in Charlotte. The race has grown in recent years and many of the state’s top teams were among the 45 schools to race Saturday.

The day started with the varsity girls race and the team ran well as they won their 2nd invitational in as many weeks (after winning the inaugural Wilson Fike 5x2500 Relay last weekend). Mo McDonnell led the Falcons with a time of 18:40 and was followed by Kristen Lospinoso (19:22), Allie Worsdale (19:36), Emily Boesch (19:50), Katie Tomasi (19:54), Kayla Hall (20:39), Taylor Howard (21:03), and Shannon Scovel (21:17).

The varsity boys race was by far the deepest race of the day with more than half of the preseason top 25 teams (all classifications) in the state running. The boys finished in 9th place, but had lots of PRs and showed signs of breaking out this year. Tom Nobles led the team with a great early season time of 16:22 and was followed in the top 5 by Ryan Hefner (17:06), Alex Jeffs (17:07), Quinn Stanley (17:20), and Will Jordan (17:21).

The girls JV team continued a string of dominating performances over the past several years, recoding a perfect score of 15 (places 1-5) led by freshman Julia Zwierzynski’s (21:10) win in her 1st high school 5K. Julia England (21:25), Brianne Vasarhelyi (21:25), Natsumi Koyama (21:27), and Hannah Groover (21:34) rounded out the top 5.

The final race of the day was the boys JV race and Green Hope dominated this as well. Ryan Michael (17:48) led the team to a very low invitational score of 28 pts. John McGarrahan (17:49), Henry Pehr (17:50), Brad Pehr (17:58), and Patrick Stylsi (18:15) made up the rest of the top 5. The boys had a great 5 man average of 17:56.

3 titles in 4 races with lots of PRs will hopefully set the tone for things to come this fall. The next big invitational is September 8th at UNCW.