Deep fields lining up for Great American XC Fest

By Doug Binder, DyeStat Editor

The Great American Cross Country Festival is Saturday and with 3,400 athletes it's a gigantic meet with tons of information to sort out.

It's also a bit of a preview of the Nike Southeast Regional, more or less, with some high powered teams from up north in the mix, like Saratoga Springs, N.Y.

The 5,000-meter course is on the WakeMed Soccer Complex course in Cary, N.C. and times tend to be very fast.
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-- We should learn more about the pecking order of top boys in North Carolina and the rest of the southeast. Seven boys in North Carolina have run 15:20 or better on 5K courses this fall, but they are split this weekend.
Philip Hall of Terry Stanford, who won the adidas XC Challenge on Sept. 21 meet in 15:08.5 (on the WakeMed course) is at Great American along with William Roberson of Needham Broughton and Ben Huffman of Providence Day.

Meanwhile, at the Wendy's Invitational in Charlotte, Ian Milder of Mount Tabor, Wyatt Maxey of Providence, Patrick Sheehan of Lake Norman and Tanis Baldwin of East Henderson will test their luck against US#8 Aaron Templeton of Hardin Valley Academy of Tennessee.

South Carolina's dynamic duo of Brent Demarest (Porter-Gaud) and Zach Langston (Lexington) are at Great American, along with Louis Colson of Edison (Virginia), Austin Sprague of St. Piux X (Georgia), Colin Tierney of Bishop Hendricken (R.I.), Tatnall (Del.) duo Jack Hagood and Stephen Garrett, and Brentwood (Tenn.) trio Alec and Aaron Thomas and Taylor Caldwell.

-- The team race features locals Needham Broughton, US#10, going up against US#11 Brentwood (Tennessee), US#14 Saratoga Springs (New York) and US#24 Tatnall (Delaware).

-- On the girls side, we should find out more about Assumption, the Kentucky school that began as preseason US#6 but ran into injury problems and out of this week's rankings. They will go up against a Race of Champions field that includes US#23 Blacksburg (Virginia), US#28 Saratoga Springs and US#37 Cardinal Gibbons (N.C.).

-- There are some interesting matchups among the projected leaders of the race as well, thanks to a hosted of talented individual entrants.

The field includes Olivia Morrow of Holy Names Academy (N.Y.), Lisa Pietrse of Carolina Forest (S.C.), Katie Fortner of Cave Spring (Virginia), Maddy Berkson of Classical (R.I.), Eliza Dekker of Durham Academy (N.C.) and Ryen Frazier of Ravencroft (N.C.).

But the favorite has to be Hannah Long of Eureka (Missouri), who is ranked US#14.

-- Pieterse is interesting. She is the daughter of 1984 Olympian Zola Budd of South Africa (ran for England in Los Angeles) and was the South Carolina Class 4A 3,200 champ last May as a sophomore. Additionally, Zola Budd is entered in the meet and is expected to run in the HBCU race.