Photo by Jeff George of ncrunners.com
Midlothian girls 3rd, Blacksburg 6th, Hidden Valley 9th, Grafton 11th at the NXN Southeast Regional. Hidden Valley's Carolyn Bethel (4th, 18:04) and Midlothian's Kara Dickerson (5th, 18:08) qualified individually for Nike Cross Nationals. The Midlothian girls were only 3 points away from the automatic qualifying 2nd place team spot and now will have to wait and see if they get one of the four at-large selections.
Photo by Steve Lee of delawaretrackxc.com
The Midlothian girls appeared to be a long shot going into the meet of seriously challenging for one of top two automatic national qualifying team spots, but they nearly pulled off the shocker finishing only three points behind Kentucky's Assumption High School (2nd, 86 pts) with a team score of 89 points. The other top teams in Virginia had already learned not to count out the Midlothian girls two weeks ago at the state championships when they won their sixth state title in the past seven years. The return of Kara Dickerson has been a huge boost for the Lady Trojans in the last two races as the Midlothian junior missed most of the last half of the cross country season due to a stress fracture injury suffered shortly after Great American.
Photo by Jeff Sides
On only two days of running, Dickerson placed sixth in the AAA state race to lead Midlothian to the team title. After getting two weeks of training in, Dickerson put together her best run ever on Saturday at the WakeMed Soccer Complex as she clocked a personal best time of 18:08 and qualified individually to compete at the Nike Cross Nationals with her fifth place run. Midlothian matched up well with Assumption through four runners with Dickerson, Skylar Evans (15th, 18:36), Kari Johnston (19th, 18:34), and Marie Johnston (22nd, 18:37) all finshing among the top 25 and well under 19 minutes. Just off her PR by 4 seconds, Meghan Mulroy in 46th place at 19:16 rounded out Midlothian's top five scoring. Their team average of 18:36 is two seconds faster than last year's NXN Southeast Regional runner-up squad Green Hope, who went onto place 10th at the Nike Cross Nationals. Midlothian's squad is definitely deserving of at-large berth consideration, which the four at-large berths should be announced later this weekend.
The three Group AA squads competing in Blacksburg (6th), Hidden Valley (9th), and Grafton (11th) all had solid showings across the board to follow Midlothian as the next highest placing squads from Virginia. The Group AA state champions Blacksburg lacked the front running like Midlothian with Kate Buss as their first finisher in 31st place at 18:54, but only had a 47 second spread for their remaining top five to produce a team score of 201 points.
Photo by Jeff Sides
Coach Daniel King has done a remarkable job with this year's Hidden Valley squad after graduating their top two runners and NXN individual qualifiers from 2010 in Annie LeHardy and Haley Cutright. The Hidden Valley girls were second in the AA state race to Blacksburg and for a third straight year will be represented at the Nike Cross Nationals in Portland, Oregon. Hidden Valley junior Carolyn Bethel followed up winning her first state title two weeks ago at Great Meadow with a personal best time of 18:04 at NXN Southeast and more importantly, earning an automatic individual berth to the national race next weekend via her fourth place finish.
NXN Southeast - Championship Girls Results
Photo Gallery by Jeff George
Photo Gallery by Jeff Sides
Photo Gallery by Steve Lee
