Green Hope Cross Country

On Saturday October 5, the Falcons participated in the Great American Cross Country Festival at Wake Med Soccer Park in Cary.  As usual many of the top teams from across the eastern half of the country descended upon Cary and the team performed very well, especially considered the unseasonably warm conditions. 

The first race of the day involving GH athletes was the Girls “Red” Race at 8:20.  The girls ran well in the coolest weather of the day as they dominated the 16 team field (most teams raced their top 7 runners in this race, while GH ran their ‘B’ team).  The winning girls team included Sarah Taylor (19:27), Sheridan Wood (19:54), Sarah Bodmer (19:57), Samantha Kolor (20:02), Emily Jordan (20:08), Julia Zwierzynski (20:33), and Martina Savage (20:38).

As Green Hope waited almost 3 hours for the next race with any Falcons runners, the heat continued to rise, eventually getting up to almost 90 degrees.  In the premier race of the day, the Race of Champions, most of the GH girls went out relatively slow, but picked up the pace as the race wore on.  Elly Henes was the one exception, though, as she went out hard with the lead pack and finished 10^th overall in 18:29.  Theresa Enright (19:07), Katie Tomasi (19:09), Kelly Fitzgerald (19:26), and Elisa Sargent (19:45) capped off the scoring for the Falcons as the team finished in 3^rd place, behind perennial southeastern powers Assumption (KY) and Blacksburg, VA (the 10^th ranked team in the US) and ahead of Saratoga Springs, New York (12^th ranked team in the US) and Barrington, Rhode Island (25^th ranked team in the US).  The girls ran well in the 1^st two races of the day, but will have to continue to work hard and cut their times down in order to compete for a state title in November.

The first GH boys race of the day was the Seeded Invitational (top 7, and the second most competitive race of the day) and the boys looked good early on in the race, but dropped in the team standings by the end of the race to finish in 8^th place.  Tom Nobles ran well considering the conditions (5^th place, 16:13) and Will Jordan set his PR of 16:43 (one of the few who managed to do so in the afternoon races). 

Green Hope entered 12 “teams” in 5 JV races.  Here is a short summary of the races:

• Boys JV I:  2 teams entered (9^th and 21^s out of 32 teams in the race).  Top finishers:  Ted MacCabe 18:07, Brian Huitt 18:08, Matthew Horan 18:09, and Sam Gallant 18:10.
• Girls JV I:  2 teams entered (6^th and 9^th out of 25 teams).  Top finishers:  Kayla Hall 20:53, Brianne Vasarhelyi 21:14, Julia England 21:22, and Anastasia Horvat 21:32.
• Boys JV II:  2 teams entered (13^th and 18^th out of 27 teams).  Top finishers:  Cole Hagstrom 18:41 and Stevie Winiecki 19:31.
• Girls JV II:  2 teams entered (3^rd and 12^th out of 16 teams).  Top finishers:  Lauren Levine 23:12, Chloe Shostak 23:20 and Allison Williams 23:20.
• Boys JV III:  4 teams entered (1^st, 12^th, 16^th, 18^th out of 21 teams).  Top finishers:  Brad Pehr 17:20 (1^st), Corey Colberg 18:06, and Max Blackington 18:07
  

  **Note:  Several Falcons runners took the SAT in the morning and rushed over to Wake Med after to run in the JV III race.

Next weekend the Falcons will send runners to Kernersville to run in the 9-10 Invitational.