News: Girls take 2nd at NXR Southeast, qualify for Nationals in Oregon
2014
The last GHXC event of the year in North Carolina is always the Nike Southeast Regional race at Wake Med Soccer Park. It is always a difficult race to predict because of the cold weather and the long break after the official end of the season. The race brings together the top teams from the southeastern United States (MD, DC, VA, NC, WV, KY, SC, GA, TN, FL, AL, MS) as the first 2 teams and 5 individuals not on those teams earn an all-expense paid trip to Portland, Oregon, for the Nike National championship. The GH girls team in 2010 and Erica Amatori (2011) and Elly Henes (2013) as individuals have qualified in the past.
There are several races to start the day, and the GH freshman/sophomore boys team finished 4th, only 10 points out of 1st place. The girls open team then finished 11th, although the girls ran runners #8-11 in the championship race as individuals.
The big race of the day for GH was the girls championship race at 11:50 am. Entering the day, the Falcons were ranked the #1 team in the region, but it was really anyone's guess as to which teams would advance. While the Falcons were ranked 1st in the southeast, most considered Blacksburg (VA) to be the pre-race favorites. At the 2K mark it was announced that the GH girls were in the lead by 100 points or more and Elly Henes was in the lead. There was still a lot of racing to go though.
Blacksburg made a strong move in the second half of the race and ended up pulling out the team win, but the Green Hope girls had 6 of the top 7 girls PR and earned the runner-up spot and, with it, the all-expense paid trip to Oregon next weekend. GH became only the second NC girls team to ever qualify (joining the 2010 GH squad) and now will try to crack the top 10 nationally.
Elly Henes was in a huge battle up the final hill with two other runners and finished as the overall runner-up with a new PR and GH record time of 17:17!
Best of luck to the team (running as the Western Cary Track Club) as they head to Oregon! Tune in next Saturday via the NXN web site to watch a live webcast of the race and root for the Falcons! Coverage starts at noon Eastern time.