The Boys and Girls Cross Country teams both competed in the State meet this past weekend. The boys had finished 1st in the Region and the Girls 2nd the previous week. This marks many straight appearances in the state for both teams.
The girls team were led by Senior Cathryrn Stuart, Senior Savannah McBrayer, Sophomore Jocelyn Coker, Junior Bailey Morris, Sophomore Morgan Boynton, and Senior Emily Colwell.
The Boys went into the State ranked either 3rd or 4th and were locked in a tight race teams to the north. Pickens County was closest along with Bremen, Lumpkin, Dawson, and Columbus. We had beaten and lost too some of these teams all during the season. The Pike County Boys team “showed up” on Saturday. The team on Saturday was led by Senior Luke Woerner who ran a personal best on the course and finished 14th. Next was running partner and the fastest guy on team Xander Potter. Xander is the first guy in 8 or 9 years to go sub 17:00 this year. He got out a little fast during the State meet but showed unbelievable grit, heart, and intestinal fortitude to gather himself for a fine race and finished 24th. Andrew Edwards ran 3rd with course PR and jumped 14 places in his seeding. Senior John Barber ran his normal solid race and held his seed. Rounding out the scorers was Christian Fowler running on the heals of Barber with a course PR and jumped places in his seed. Running 6th was Jack Bell and Jack 7th Jack Barron who both ran course personal records.
This 3rd in the State finish truly embodies what “TEAM” is all about. They suffered as a team, worked as a team, laughed as a team, and they needed every team member to play a role on Saturday and he did.
Some of these Boys were running up to 60 miles a week in August, they backed down to 50 in September. They met and ran on Sundays. They ran in the rain, hot, at night. The Cumulative GPA on this team in close to a 4.0, they do most things right. They deserve any recognition you can give them this week; they truly earned the 3rd Place finish in the STATE.
