Green Hope Cross Country

The 2nd and final overnight trip of the year was a return trip to Charlotte’s McAlpine Park.  Close to one month after the Providence Invitational the Falcons were back to race in the Hare and Hound Invitational.  It was the 3rd time the team had entered this event and was also the 3rd straight weekend of racing for many of the runners.  The race has become one of the larger meets in the state in recent years and the team was excited for the event. Temperatures would be much cooler than the last time, but it was also projected to be a rainy, dreary morning.  

Things got started early with the boy’s championship race at 7:55.  The boys were without their top runner, Dax Mahone, but were excited to see if they had made strides from where they were the first time they ran the course the previous month.  While the 7 ran very well last weekend at Adidas this was not to be their day.  The race started very fast with the leaders through the mile in 4:45, but the boys may have been caught a bit off-guard with the pace to start.  The boys finished in 9th place and were led by seniors Matt Dubrule (17:14) and Theo Zalc (17:15).  

The 2nd race of the day was the girl’s championship race.  With 6 girls in the race it was a rare mix of 3 seniors and 3 freshmen running in a varsity race.  The girls were hoping to continue with recent success some of them have had and it turned out to be a huge race as the 1st 5 girls finished with career PRs led by senior Kaitlin Elliott (21:44), freshman Amruta Mayadeo (21:52), senior Lily Slaughter (21:58), freshman Olivia Percival-Shim (22:39), and freshman Riley Blake (23:04). 

The 3rd race was the boy’s invitational race.  In this race the 2nd 6 GH boys would be running against the top 7 from many teams as well as other teams’ 2nd 7 runners so it created a bit of an unknown to the race and the 3rd boys race—the Open Race at 9:40am.  The race went out very fast, much like the championship race and was a crowded field with 441 finishers.  3 of the 1st 4 boys ran career PRs as Miguel Carrasco Gomez (PR 17:34), Tommy Dunn (17:37), Matheo Destouesse (PR 17:47), and Andrew Leary (PR 17:51) led the way to a 4th place finish (out of 61 teams!).  

5 girls were entered in the girl’s invitational race.  Like the boys invitational, many teams enter their top 7 in this race, while others enter their 2nd 7.  Like the earlier girls’ championship race, 3 freshmen were getting big race experience in this one.  Much like the girls varsity race this ended up being a big race for the 1st 4 finishers who all set career PRs.  Freshman Lilly Burdick (22:48), freshman Dannika Scruggs (23:37), freshman Sophie Stachler (24:00), junior Kirstin Crump (24:08), and senior Gwen Slaughter (season PR 24:22) made up the scoring 5 for the team.  

The final race of the day and 5th straight with Green Hope runners was the Boys Open Race.  Many teams enter their 2nd 7 runners in this, while Green Hope and a few other teams would have runners in this one outside the top 14.  The Falcons hoped that their traditionally strong depth on the boys side would be evident in the team results, but it would be a tall task.  It started raining pretty steady just before the start of the boys race and this was one of the biggest fields for a high school race ever in North Carolina with 544 finishers.  It was difficult to tell how the team was doing as the race progressed with so many runners.  It was also difficult for the boys to navigate in and out of others with so many shoulder to shoulder, but in the end the team finished 2nd out of 48 teams (9pts out of 1st) and 11 of 15 runners set career PRs.