Orange boys had a great cross-country season to date and were coming off a win where they scored 42 points at the 3A Midwest Regional. However, they were certainly a dark horse to make the podium yesterday afternoon at the NCHSAA 3A State Championships. They had an advantage over the field with their top two running in Myles Jermyn and Lucas Van Mater dwho were the best 1-2 amongst the contenders by a good margin, but their spread back to their 4th and 5th runners looked on paper to bee difficult to overcome and projected nearly 60 points off of prerace favorite North Lincoln and First Flight who had a tight 1-5 pack with Orange having a 2:29 spread from 1-5 using 2024 seasons best.
| Place | Team | Points | Scorers | Split | Average |
| 1 | North Lincoln | 127 | 16+24+26+27+34 (53+59) | 33.59 | 16:40.54 |
| 2 | First Flight | 142 | 20+21+30+33+38 (79+130) | 22.00 | 16:45.08 |
| 3 | North Buncombe | 177.5 | 3.5+31+39+48+56 (102+123) | 1:36.20 | 16:44.68 |
| 4 | Croatan | 183 | 1+23+28+58+73 (75+113) | 2:08.64 | 16:44.01 |
| 5 | Orange | 186.5 | 3.5+7+35+41+100 (120+136) | 2:29.90 | 16:41.80 |
Orange certainly didn't count themselves out, especially after coming off a great regional meet. Up front, Jermyn and Van Mater would do their jog contending in the lead group as long as they could and finishing 6th and 8th overall for All-State finishes running 15:56 and 16:04 scoring a combined 8 points for Orange through two runners.
They'd have no idea what was playing out with their 3-5 behind them.
Senior Cyrus Neal came in as their fourth runner on the year with a personal best of 17:00 and expected to score around 40 team points. He'd have a breakthrough day finishing 12th overall, just 9 seconds off being All-State and scoring 9 points for his team. Sophomore Grant Schmid would also have a strong day matching his 16:53 season best and finishing 23rd overall and scoring 19 points.
The biggest day came from senior Peter Musser who came in as their 5th man with a season-best of 18:08. He was projected to score 100 points for Orange. BUt Musser would have the race of his life setting a 62-second personal best running 17:06 to score 27 and be the fastest 5th man of any NCHSAA 3A team helping lock up a state title for Orange with 63 total points ahead of North Lincoln who would score 96 points. Their 1-5 gap would shrink from 2:29 to 1:10 on the day that mattered most with a team average dropping from 16:41 to 16:29.
Orange's team results would be the fifth best when combining All-Classes results from yesterday's NCHSAA State Championships.
Regardless of what anything looked like on paper coming in, Orange trusted the training and the work they have put in over the course of the season and the belief Coach Brian Schneidewind put in them that they could come out with the 3A team title.
Orange would be the only upset team victory we'd see at yesterday's NCHSAA 3A State Championships where the pre-race favorite did not come out on top.
