Green Hope Cross Country

The Great American Cross Country Festival was cancelled last weekend due to Hurricane Ian so the trip west to Kernersville for the NC Runners Invitational would be the last invitational of the year.  While the team was disappointed they did not get to run at Great American, they were also excited for NC Runners, which is traditionally the last large invitational on the calendar. 

Saturday would be a long morning of racing as the Falcons start times were 9:30, 10:00, 11:00, and 12:00 with 52runners entered.  The girls invitational race was the 1^st of the day for the Falcons and the girls were excited to start things off on a crisp October morning.  Senior Grace Boughton got stronger throughout the race and would lead the team with a season-best time of 20:36.  Senior Alice Emel ran a career best 20:45,while sophomore Alicia Craia (21:04), senior Kayla Gordon (career PR of 21:10), and senior Lisa Zhao (22:02) also helped the girls to a 4^th place team finish. 

The 2^nd race of the morning was the boy’s championship race. While Broughton was the favorite, the Falcons felt they had a chance to take home the team title.  The boys got out very well at the gun and senior Gavin Hansen led for much of the race on the way to a 7^th place finish (15:45).  Senior Luke Young (16:00) ran a very good race, while the next 4 GH boys set career PRs (Liam Young 16:03, Andrew Vo 16:34, Dax Mahone 16:38, and Sebastian Percival-Shim 16:47).  Vo and Percival-Shim in particular ran very strong races over the last mile or so and seemed to get stronger as the race went on.  As for the team results, Broughton appeared to be off a bit and the Falcons ran very well to pull out the 44 point victory. 

After one event with no Green Hope runners, the boy’s 9-10 race went off at 11:00.  This race is considered to be the unofficial JV state championship and the boys have done very well over the years.  We were not sure how the boys would fare as a team, as they all raced only 3 days earlier and there are several other strong programs out there.  When it was all said-and-done 7 of the 10 boys ran career PRs led by Logan Blake (17:45),Miguel Carrasco Gomez (18:15), and Dhaval Pant (18:23) as the boys finished in 3^rd place—only 10pts away from 1^st. 

The final race of the day was a mixed boys and girls open race at noon and there were 22 GH runners who would toe the line.  Everyone was very excited to see how the runners performed and from the looks of it all runners were really moving.  The problem was that something got messed up a bit in how the course was run.  There was no gator to lead the top runners and it appears as though the runners went a little further than they needed.  GH runners, however, finished 1 through 4 (Matt Dubrule, Tommy Dunn, Theo Zalc, Nikhil Sah) in the Boy’s Open, leading the team to the win.  The girls also ran very well and were paced by junior Julia Plura’s 15^th place finish. 

It was an exciting day of running and a great end to the invitational portion of the season.  The team has one more regular season meet on October 12^th and then the SWAC conference championship on the 18^th before the regional meet at the end of the month.