During the Pack Invitational on Saturday, men’s cross country runner Brian Himelright and women’s runner Angelina Blackmon were determined to sweep the Blue Devils. Himelright secured his first collegiate victory by passing Duke’s Josh Lund in the final 100 yards at the Wake Med Soccer Park course in Cary.
“I tried to stick right behind him coming up the last hill and then with about 100 to go, I just kicked as hard as I could and managed to get past him,” Himelright said.
Himelright, a true freshman running unattached, wanted to make one of his only races of the season a notable one.
“I was out a little bit earlier with a knee injury and have been training through that to get better,” he said. “Since this is the only race of my season, I wanted to run a good time” he said.
Himelright finished the 5k course in 15:02, 19 seconds ahead of the top time from September’s Wolfpack Invitational. At that meet, Fredy Torres completed the same course with a time of 15:21.
“I’m shocked,” freshman Eyob Eyualem said. “We knew he was fast, but he hadn’t really raced much the whole season, so we didn’t know what he was going to do.”
True freshman Patrick Campbell (5th, 15:25), Eyualem (8th, 15:34), and redshirt freshman Srini Iyer (18th, 16:17) rounded out the lineup for the Wolfpack men. Overall, the team wasn’t concerned with competing for a team score.
“This isn’t really an important meet for the school,” Eyualem said. “But, it’s kind of amazing and good for the future of this N.C. State team to see Brian and Patrick do pretty well.”
On the women’s side, unattached freshman Marika Walker mounted a comeback of her own, sprinting past a Duke runner in the final 200 yards to capture 7th place.
“I was just trying to finish strong,” Walker said. “The coach told me to run the first mile pretty decent based off of a split. Then, I was supposed to just race.”
Former cross country runner Angelina Blackmon won the meet for State, finishing in 16:57.
“I wasn’t really expecting to run the race until coach Laurie [Henes] said, ‘Alright, you’re going to run,'” Blackmon said. “She really wants me to get a good base and some good training in for track, which is the only outdoor sport that I still have eligibility in.”
Junior Kara McKenna, another State runner redshirting this year, took third place behind Adidas Raleigh’s Toni Salucci.
“Angelina and Kara have been doing well all season, and they are continuing to do well,” Walker said. “I’m excited to see what we do next year.”
Typically, the team only fields a few runners in the low-key meet, seeing as how the NCAA Southeast Regional is just a week away. This year, however, due to NCAA requirements, the majority of the team was forced to participate in the meet so that they could have their required fifth meet completed prior to the Regional competition.
“The team that was actually running at regionals wasn’t trying to run or race hard since now isn’t really a good time for a race,” Walker said.
