Green Hope Girls Advance to Nike Cross Nationals

The Falcons broke a 3-year drought for our state, and established themselved firmly on top of the team rankings for 2014.

 

The previews were clear: behind the top-ranked girls team, the field was wide open at Saturday's Nike Cross Nationals Southeast Regional.  There were so many strong squads that anyone ranked 2nd through 9th coming into the meet would have a serious chance to grab the second and final qualifying spot for the championship meet in Portland.  Then the gun fired, and Green Hope charged hard to the front right away, and that preview became useless.  Leading the team race at 2000 meters, the Falcons never let any of the other challengers for the second spot get close, and they even made it eventual champion Blacksburg sweat it out.  Green Hope finished with 106 points, 20 behind the Bruins and almost 40 ahead of 3rd-place Lake Braddock.  It was one of the strongest performances ever by a single North Carolina girls team, and it earned them a trip to Oregon next weekend, where they will race one last time this season against the best teams from around the country.

Green Hope also ended a 3-year drought for North Carolina - the last time a school from our state made it through to Nike Cross Nationals was in 2010.  Unsurprisingly, the team that finished 2nd that year was...Green Hope.  The Falcons remain the only girls from NC to earn that honor; Broughton's 2008 boys and the Chapel Hill boys teams of 2005 & 2006 have also made it through to nationals.  This was an emphatic performance from beginning to end, and given their strong challenge to Blacksburg (currently ranked US #5 in our database), this team may have something more to show this weekend.  The strong showing moved Green Hope up to US #9 in our statistical rankings, which should give the girls a shot of confidence going into their final race.  

I got the chance to interview the Falcons as a team after all was said and done Saturday, and their genuine joy in their acomplishment is tangible:

 

Individually, Elly Henes will get the most attention for her 17:17 time, which landed her 2nd place overall (see her interview below).  However, the time and finish that jumped out at me the most was Theresa Enright running 18:15 and finishing 23rd against such a talented field.  It was a 10-second PR for her but a 40-second improvement on her previous best from this season, and it was certainly a factor in helping the Falcons' middle pack stay near the front of the race.

 

 

 

Two other performances from the meet drew my attention as noteworthy (and I am sure there are others that escaped me).  If course, Jeremy Brown's 14:57 was spectacular; the 31-second PR, good for 3rd place overall, earned him an individual berth in Portland.  He ran a very strong race throughout, hanging in the second pack through 3000 meters before moving forward over the last mile.

 

Finally, congratulations to Cardinal Gibbons on the overall success of their program this year.  The day did not go as well as Gibbons had hoped it would, on either side, but the Crusaders finished 8th in the boys' race and 10th in the girls' race on Saturday.  That made them one of only two schools out of the 13 states that attend the meet to crack the top 10 in both genders.