Green Hope Cross Country

Saturday October 28th was the Mideast Regional Championship.  The regional meets are used to qualify teams for the state meet the following weekend.  25% of the teams who race that day will continue on to the state meet.  The Falcons have had a lot of success in the meet historically with the girls winning 10 titles along with 4 runner-up finishes over a 16 year stretch and the boys winning 8 titles with 6 runner-up finishes.  The girls team knew going into the race they would not be fighting for a spot on the podium, but the boys appeared to be in the mix for a top 5 spot to move on to the state meet, but the results could be very close.  

One thing that makes regionals a lot of fun is that several classifications/regions run their races at Wake Med Soccer Park on the same day.  The 2A Mideast Races would go off at 8:00/8:30, the 4A Mideast Races (with GH) at 9:00/9:30, the 4A East 11:00/11:30, and the 1A Mideast at 12:00/12:30.  So the 1st race with GH runners was the boy’s race at 9:00am.  The boys finished in a disappointing 2nd place at the conference meet, but they hoped to have all of their runners healthy and ready to compete.  On paper they had a good chance to claim one of the spots in the state meet, but this was not to be their day.  The boys got off to a slow start relative to all of the top teams in the region and did not close the gap as the meet went on.  The team finished in 6th place which was the lowest finish for the boy’s program in 11 years.  Senior Dax Mahone did earn himself a spot in the state meet as an individual qualifier, however, so he will race next weekend.  

The girls race was next up at 9:30.  2 seniors, 1 junior, and 4 freshmen made up the top 7 runners racing in the Regional Meet.  The girls hoped to thrown down some PRs and the younger girls were after some more big race experience to motivate them for the future.  Freshman Olivia Percival-Shim went out hard and ran her best race of the year leading the Falcons.  She finished with a new PR of 21:22 and was followed by senior Lily Slaughter who ran a career-best 21:42.  The girls finished in 13th place (out of 18 schools).  

Thank you to all of the seniors for their hard work over their careers and best of luck to Dax Mahone in next week’s state championship.