Green Hope Cross Country

The 3rd major invitational of the year is the Adidas Invitational at Wake Med Soccer Park every year in mid-September.  The event gets many of the top teams from North Carolina as well as several top programs from the southeastern U.S.  While the Falcons were entered in 4 races this year, it would be a very short day for the team as all 4 races were back-to-back beginning at 8:00am.  

The 1st race of the day was the boy’s JV Red Race with a whopping 22 GH runners.  After last weekend when the 11-12 boys won their race at Friday Night Lights and the 9-10 boys finished 2nd the team hoped to fair very well.  It is always difficult to know what to expect, though, when going against the top teams in the state.  Traditionally this is a very fast race as it takes place on a great course and conditions tend to be pretty cool at 8:00am.  Junior Tommy Dunn went out fast again towards the lead pack and he was able to hold on to 8th place for a huge career PR of 17:34. Each of the top 7 runners had big career PRs—in fact 21 of the 22 runners in the race set a career PR.  Tommy was followed by senior Saahil Patel (17:51), junior Theo Zalc (17:51), sophomore Logan Blake (17:56), and senior Cyrus Patel (17:56).  Blacksburg, VA won the team race and Broughton edged the Falcons for 2nd place.  

The 2nd race of the day was the girl’s JV Red Race.  8 girls were entered in the race and most have been making steady strides throughout the early part of the year.  The girls were excited to see how they would fare.  Several of the girls ended up having a breakout performance for them as the 1st 7 GH finishers set career PRs.  The scorers for GH were junior Avery Bergamini (23:07), junior Kaitlin Elliott (23:13), freshman Charis Choy (23:41), junior Anna Dudley (23:51), and junior Riley Chirichella (24:13).  The girls finished in 13th place (out of 21 schools) as a team. 

The most-anticipated event of the day was the boy’s championship race.  Even after their convincing win at Friday Night Lights it was difficult to say exactly where the boys were compared to the top teams in the state, but this race would provide a good barometer.  Mount Tabor did a temp run at Friday Night Lights and Broughton had not raced in state yet this year.  There were also many strong out-of-state teams.  The race went out incredibly fast and the winner set a new meet record.  For Green Hope, their pack running broke up a bit more than they would have liked which hurt the team a bit, but it was still an excellent performance as the team finished 5th (3rd from NC behind Broughton and 3pts behind defending state champs Mt. Tabor).  Gavin Hansen was ran strong throughout the race and finished with a huge personal best and new all-time GH 4th-fastest 5K time of 15:28.  Senior Luke Young also broke 16min for the 1st time and clocked a 15:58, while Liam Young (16:18), Dax Mahone (16:44), Andrew Vo (16:48) and Seamus O’Driscoll (16:49) also broke 17 minutes.  

The final race of the day with GH runners was the girl’s championship race.  The girls knew they would face a very difficult test with a strong field of teams, but they hoped to break out some fast times and put the last 2 invitationals behind them a bit.  The girls were determined and ran their best race of the year to this point.  Sophomore Alicia Craia (20:30), senior Alice Emel (20:50), senior Kayla Gordon (career PR of 21:24), senior Shea Sullivan (21:39), and senior Lisa Zhao (21:39) were the scoring runners for the Falcons.  

The next big event for the Falcons is the Great American Cross Country Festival on October 1st.  The race brings in most of the top teams from the southeastern United States so for many runners October 1st cannot come soon enough.