On Wednesday afternoon, 16 teams from all over Eastern NC descended upon Roanoke Rapids for the annual Pre-Conference Cross Country meet.
There were 4 local teams(Roanoke Rapids, Halifax Academy, Northampton County, and Cornerstone Christian School) as well as schools such as Rocky Mount, Northern Nash, Franklinton, Pamlico County, Manteo, and Lejeune. The field was the largest in quite some time for this event due to the fact that Northampton County will host the 1A East Regional meet at the RR Lake Park and Canal Trail in late October.
In the boys meet, Roanoke Rapids finished 8th overall, with Northampton County finishing 10th, and Halifax Academy finishing 11th. Cornerstone Christian did not have enough male runners to record a team score.
In the girls meet, Halifax Academy finished 5th overall, with Roanoke Rapids finishing 7th, Northampton County finishing 11th, and Cornerstone Christian finishing 13th.
Top finishers from each local school were:Roanoke Rapids Head Coach Mark Snead stated, "This was a great meet. We had a lot of strong teams from all over Eastern North Carolina come to compete today. This was a great chance for everyone involved to run in a strong meet to help prepare themselves for the upcoming conference and invitational seasons. I was really proud of our teams today. We had most of our runners drop time from our mock meet last week. It also helped our runners see how to compete with some of the strongest runners in the state from the 1A to the 3A level. To finish in the top half of both the boys and girls race shows them that their hard work is worth it and that we can keep getting better."