Green Hope Cross Country

The Falcons headed west to Charlotte Friday August 23^rd to preview the McAlpine course in preparation for Saturday’s Providence Invitational.  After a pasta dinner and a night in a hotel the varsity boys were the 1st to toe the line on a relatively cool and wet Saturday morning.  This would be a different looking team from last year as 3 of the top 5 graduated and the Falcons also decided to let their top 4 boys train today rather than race.  This would allow several runners new to A Company to take advantage of the opportunity and step up to the challenge presented.   The boys battled and were not completely satisfied with their individual results which will hopefully spark the drive needed to keep working at it.  Kyle Davis competed in his first 5K and led the Falcons with a very good time of 17:13. He was followed by Sanjay Kumar running a 20 second PR of 17:19.  Ben Cale (17:36), Nicholas Polsinelli(17:57), and Jakub Kreuter (17:57) rounded out the top 5. 

The girl’s varsity race followed the boys at 8:30.  The team has been plagued by several injuries and sicknesses recently, but the girls were excited to see how they could perform.  Kelsey Vogel led the Falcons with a very good early season time of 19:44 as she showed signs of getting back to top form.  Senior Natasha Abramowicz was next in 21:04.  Natasha also showed signs of getting into sub-20:00 form.  Sophomore Reagan McDaniel (PR of 21:43), Senior Zoey Davila (22:12), and Junior Arshia Haq(PR of 22:22) completed the scoring.  The Falcons will need to close the gap between their 1 and 5 runners in order to qualify for the state meet in early November, but there is plenty of time to get to work. 

After a 1 hour block with no Green Hope runners racing the JV boys race went off at 10:00am. This is a race the JV boys and girls traditionally dominate, but the boys race was a bit of an unknown with the top 4 runners sitting out of the varsity race and many of the next level runners taking the SAT, but the boys hoped their depth would allow them to contend for the JV title.  Weddington proved to be too tough on this day as the Falcons finished 3^rd of 29 schools, but there were several PRs and other breakout performances.  The 5 scorers for the Falcons were junior Gabe Da Silva (PR of 18:24), freshman Gavin Hansen (a big debut time of 18:30),senior Dylan Snyder (18:33, a PR of 1min and 38 sec!), junior Andrew Mathew(18:41), and senior Jarrod Seifert (18:45). 

The final race of the day was the JV girls race.  7 of the 16 girls were running in their 1^st invitational race and the group was very excited.  Fortunately, the weather remained unseasonably cool instead of the normal high temperatures by the time this race goes off.  The girls fought hard and managed a 2^nd place finish as a team.  Scoring runners were Rebecca Robinson (21:37),Tess Davila (21:58), Melody Lee (22:41), Sarah O’Sullivan (22:57), and AnnaTinglestad (23:21). 

Overall it was a good day of racing and the Falcons gained valuable experience.  The next invitational is Friday Night Lights Sept. 6th in Kernersville.