Watauga's Avery Cannon executed his plan to perfection for at the NCHSAA 3A State Championship this morning. The Watauga senior knew the field was loaded with talent, but went out hard from the start.
After the initial 800m loop, the field had let him gain a lead on the field. It was clear his plan was to take it from the gun hoping to take the speed away from fast kickers in the field like Weddington's Jake Toomey amongst others.
The field had strung out, and through the 2 mile mark Cannon had a ten second lead over Toomey who seemed to be the only athlete in contention at that point in the race.
Cannon would not let his foot off the gas as he would roll through the line in 15:39 to win his first ever NCHSAA 3A State Championship. Cannon becomes Watauga's first boys NCHSAA State Champion since Ricky Brookshire in 1999!
It was thought coming in that the race would be pretty tight from start to finish with five boys coming in with PRs within 5 seconds of each other. Cannon certainly blew those expectations out of the water.
Toomey would take 2nd in 15:51, Jacob Gallant (Mount Tabor) took 3rd in 16:04 ahead of Zachary Clark (Cleveland) and sophomore Ryan Motondo (Williams).
Unofficially, Chapel Hill boys look to have won the team title, but we'll have to wait for the awards ceremony to know for sure.
We'll have highlight videos, results, photos and interviews up later in the day.