Green Hope Cross Country

The Falcons split up a bit for two big invitational races the weekend of September 9. Around 70 Green Hope runners made their way to Kernersville for the Friday Night Lights Race to race on the state meet course. On a very hot Friday, the JV girls began the night of racing at 6:20pm. The girls raced well and finished 3rd as a team (out of 31 teams). Leah Spendley (9th) was the 1st GH finisher with fellow sophomores Aubry Dreikosen and Alex O’Sullivan finishing 2nd and 3rd for the team.

When the JV girls race was completed, the JV boys followed with another 3rd place team finish (out of 33 schools). After leading the team scoring at the halfway point, the boys fell off a bit, but raced hard. Ryan Tsolis (10th), Thomas Walsh (12th), Carter Pehr (13th), Hiromu Koyama (14th), and Alex Tomasi (17th) completed the scoring for the Falcons.

The middle level of races were the invitational races which include lower level varsity teams and “B” teams of the more competitive schools. So GHXC entered a boys and girls team in these races with the girls racing as the sun started to go down and the boys following them as the temps started to drop a bit. Meg Penaganti, Lauren McLaughlin, and Jordyn Parks led the Falcons to their third straight 3rd-place finish of the night (out of 33 teams).

With the top 10 boys in Virginia for a Saturday invitational, runners 11-18 represented the boys team in the invitational race and were edged out by the top 7 runners from Marvin Ridge as they finished 2nd out of 33 teams). Ryan Kemper (5th), Matthew Kehn (14th), Thomas Vo (16th), Luke Bakley (19th), and Srikar Chedalavada (20th) were GHXC’s scoring runners.

The final race of the day was the championship girls’ race. The GH girls were the favorites going in, but it was unclear how the race would ultimately play out. By the 2 mile mark the girls were packed together near the front and they pushed each other to a dominating team win. In what would turn out to be the lowest team score the varsity has ever had in an invitational race, the girls finished 2-6 for an incredibly low team score of 20 points to win over a field of 26 teams. Sarah Taylor (2nd), Samantha Kolor (3rd), Kelsey Vogel (4th), Alessandra Rodriguez (5th), and Catherine Holbrook (6th) scored for the Falcons.

Up in the Roanoke, Virginia, area the top 10 boys and Coach Bochert were getting a good night’s sleep Friday to prepare for the Knight’s Crossing Invitational on Saturday. The field was loaded with many top teams from the Southeast. When the boys awoke Saturday morning they were greeted by rising temperatures on a course with no shade and an 11:15 AM start time. While race times were not quite what the boys were looking for again, the effort was definitely there and the boys brought home their second invitational victory in a row to start the year (over a field of 33 teams). Peyton Barish finished 4th overall with a time of 15:47 to move up a spot to fourth on the all-time GHXC PR list. He was followed by Ian Delgado (16:08), Finn McBride (16:15), Daniel Vo (16:34), and Cole Hagstrom (16:52).

Next up for the Falcons will be the Pirate Invitational and Greensboro Invitational on September 24th, while the next race for the top 7 boys will be Great American on October 1st.