News: Friday Night Lights
2022
On Friday September 9th the Falcons headed west to Kernersville for the annual Friday Night Lights Invitational. This is always a very exciting and competitive events with most of the top teams and runners in North Carolina. The town sets up portable lights throughout the course so runners race in the dark and under the lights for the last 6 events of the night. Throughout the event a DJ plays music and when the lights go on the crowd usually has a great time dancing and enjoying all of the food trucks along with watching some great racing.
For the Falcons, runners were entered in 4 races. The 1st of the evening was the boys 11/12 race. The boys only had 5 entered in the race so all 5 would be scoring runners. The boys were determined to go for it from the start and went out fast near the league pack, in front of a huge field. By the mile mark junior Tommy Dunn was with the race leader and stayed there right to the end as he finished 2nd. As the other 4 boys neared the finish it was clear this would be a dominating win for the Falcons (32-97 over Providence Day). Senior Saahil Patel finished in 5th place (18:29.4), junior Theo Zalc (7th,18:32.76), senior Cyrus Jahromi (8th, 18:33.16), and senior Nikhil Shah (10th, 18:44.14) rounded out the scoring.
That race was followed by the boys 9/10 event. The Falcons entered 10 runners in another very full field. With many inexperienced, but talented runners it was a bit of an unknown as to how the boys would fare. The race started fast and seemed to surprise the Falcons a bit, but as the race continued the boys slowly made their move. By the halfway point sophomore Logan Blake was with the leaders and stayed there as he ran anew PR (18:25.17), finishing in 2nd place. While Ivey Redmon typically runs a little slower than Wake Med, 9 of the 10 boys ran career PRs. Scoring runners that helped the team earn a runner-up finish were freshman Miguel Carrasco Gomez (18:59.18), freshman Dhaval Pant (19:07.98, sophomore Sky Choy (19:33.91), and freshman Ian House (19:47.99).
After 4 races with no GH participants, the girls varsity was up racing in the girl’s championship event at 9:15pm. The girls have not had a chance to run their top 5 all at the same time and would not again on this night, but they were excited to be racing under the lights on a Friday Night! The race was stacked with the best teams in the state and the girls hoped to run their best. Senior Alice Emel was the 1st GH runner with a season PR of 20:57. She was followed by senior Grace Boughton (21:25), senior Kayla Gordon (career PR of 21:47), senior Shea Sullivan (22:15), and senior Lisa Zhao (22:21).
The last event of the night (before the fireworks) was the boys championship scheduled to begin at 9:42pm. The boys field was absolutely loaded with all of the best teams in the state and the boys were expected to fare well, but it would be tough to tell throughout the race how the team was faring because the field was so crowded with high quality runners. The top-ranked team in the state, Mt. Tabor, did not race all out as they ran atempo workout during the race. That meant several other highly-ranked teams would contend for the team title. There were also many of the top individuals in the state which made it tougher to get a feel for the team score. The race went out fast as it always does and runners were shoulder to shoulder throughout the race. When the dust settled, the boys finished with a dominating performance, taking home the team title (127pts to 201 for 2nd place Cuthbertson). Senior Gavin Hansen was the 1st Falcon runner (15:55.27) and senior Luke Young also earned a top 20 finish (16:06.47). Senior Liam Young was the 3rd GH finisher (16:38), while senior Andrew Vo (16:46.44), junior Dax Mahone (16:47.16), and sophomore Seamus O’Driscoll (17:16.65) set career PRs.
Next up for the Falcons is the Adidas Invitational atWake Med Soccer Park next weekend.