Conference was the meet we had been training for all season, and would be the last race for most of us this year. Green Hope was expected to dominate the meet and take home the championship for the eighth time in nine years. There was a lot of pressure on every runner and we were all nervous.
The Green Hope High School JV team was huddled up 100 yards from the finish line, listening to a pre-race speech by one of the captains. The speech was kind of confusing and not that motivating, so my training group known as “B Company” met for our own personal pow-wow. Our group wore matching lime green shoelace that had our names and times on them, another example of how we had come together as a unified team, a force to be reckoned with. For our inspirational speech, I referenced the popular sports movie, Miracle. “Great moments come from great opportunities. And that’s what we have here tonight, that’s what we’ve earned here tonight. If we raced them ten times, they might beat us nine, but not tonight. Tonight we shut them down because we can. This is our time.” We cheered and broke from the huddle, pumped and ready. There was a lot of pressure on us to do well, and everyone on that starting line knew it.
From the very beginning, I could tell this was going to be a close race. Two of my teammates and I were in the running for the JV MVP and we all wanted to win. The race was a combined girls and guys race, so the course was crowded, and people were always around me. I was constantly looking over my shoulder to see if my competition was catching me. After the second mile, it became a race between me and one of my training partners, Rose Kim. The WakeMed course was course where the winner would be determined on the last mile, and we both knew that. We rounded the last corner and starting sprinting up the final hill. This hill was a half of a mile long and has been to known to make or break races. I raced Rose all the way up, but she pulled ahead and sprinted across the finish in a time of 20:11 to capture the JV MVP title. I finished seven seconds later with a time of 20:18, a twenty second improvement. The next three finishers were all runners from my “Company” and everyone ran great.
Green Hope captured the conference title in both the boys and the girls’ race, earning a perfect score in the girls’ race. We celebrated by taking team photos, and group photos, a great end to a great night.
B Company
