The cross country boy's team from Milton (5th-155 pts) concluded their season today with a hard-fought 5th place team finish out of 32 scoring schools at the Nike South East Regional meet in Cary, NC. With many state championship schools competing from VA, DE, DC, NC, SC, WV, KY, TN, FL, etc., the top-2 teams automatically qualified for the national championship meet to be held in Portland, OR on December 2nd. The Jungle TC/Loudon Valley (VA) (1st-72 pts) easily won the meet with Bulldog XC /The Bolles School (FL) (2nd-118 pts) as runner-up. The Eagles kept in close in the team race as seniors Sam Bowers (5th-15:09) & Nicholas Yanek (6th-15:09) paced the team effort with the highest finishes at this meet in school history and individually qualified for the National meet as the top-5 overall finishers NOT on the first or second place team! Milton has not qualified any runner to a national high school meet since Ian Dickinson went to the Footlocker National Meet in 1999. Bowers & Yanek will leave in the next few days to race the country's best at the Nike Cross Nationals at Glendoveer Golf Course in Beaverton, OR, hosted by the NIKE shoe company.
In the team race, Western Cary TC/Green Hope (NC) (3rd-125 pts) was a strong 3rd and secured an at-large bid to attend the National Championships and were followed by Louisville Xtreme/St Xavier (KY) (4th-145 pts) whom also bested the Eagles. Milton could not overcome a very large gap between it's national qualifiers and its strong pack as the Eagles had seniors Michael Malkowski (50th-16:02), Dru Milton (62nd-16:05) & Ryan Beitzell (85th-16:16) conclude the Milton scoring. Junior Luke Bonneville (121st-16:32) & freshman Hayden Marshall (123rd-16:33) also competed for the teams 5th place effort and final race 2017 season.