No one in the South Region could have expected Cara Kiernan, a senior from Vienna at The Potomac School, to have cracked into to the top eight in the seeded race in Charlotte. In fact, nearly the same could be said about her in Virginia as only a few had started to take notice of her after her dominating wins at the Independent School State Meet and MileStat.com Invitational. However, many should have taken heed last week when she broke the Fork Union course record at the MileStat.com Invite. She made it very clear early on in the race that she was ready to run as she was in the thick of things with the front pack of runners vying for national qualifying spots from the get go. Rachael Forish of Texas had broken away from this pack and went onto win the race in 17:56, but as for Kiernan, she remained right with the chase pack behind Forish as they entered the lake for the final stretch. With less than 100 meters left, she made a hard push to the line and broke away from the pack to earn an astonishing third place finishing time of 18:05.22 to secure her spot to the Foot Locker National Meet in San Diego and earning herself athlete of the week honors.
No one in the South Region could have expected Cara Kiernan, a senior from Vienna at The Potomac School, to have cracked into to the top eight in the seeded race in Charlotte. In fact, nearly the same could be said about her in Virginia as only a few had started to take notice of her after her dominating wins at the Independent School State Meet and MileStat.com Invitational. However, many should have taken heed last week when she broke the Fork Union course record at the MileStat.com Invite. She made it very clear early on in the race that she was ready to run as she was in the thick of things with the front pack of runners vying for national qualifying spots from the get go. Rachael Forish of Texas had broken away from this pack and went onto win the race in 17:56, but as for Kiernan, she remained right with the chase pack behind Forish as they entered the lake for the final stretch. With less than 100 meters left, she made a hard push to the line and broke away from the pack to earn an astonishing third place finishing time of 18:05.22 to secure her spot to the Foot Locker National Meet in San Diego and earning herself athlete of the week honors.