Areheart & Cheeseman Advance, Brentwood Gets In By One Point

Nike Cross Nationals Southeast Regional
Ben Thompson


The Brentwood High Bruins accepting their runner up trophy at Wakemed Soccer Complex on Saturday.
Photo: Dan Loughlin

Chaos In Cary

On the eve of the NXR Southeast Regional, I put out a tweet thread that said this as it pertains to the girl's team competition: 

"the formula [to advance] for Brentwood and Webb are completely different. Brentwood has to have a 30 second spread and a sub 18:30 average. Webb has to have 3 girls in in the top 20 and the supporting runners inside of a minute. They placed 3rd with that in 2023."

Brentwood's strength is their pack. Webb's strength is their front end firepower. How those two styles pan out in a field of 25 of the best teams in the Southeast is a coin flip. With the favorite, Cardinal Gibbons of Raleigh, running on what can essentially be considered their home course, the two Tennessee teams were hoping to grab that second auto-qualifier and executed as close to formula as possible.

Brentwood's average was 18:15 with a 31 second spread.
Webb put three girls in the top 15 and their fifth runner 1:12 behind.

If you were refreshing the live scores from Flashtiming, the first results had Cardinal Gibbons and Webb tied at 88 with Brentwood in the low hundreds, the next one had Gibbons still on top with Webb one point ahead of Brentwood. It stayed that way for a minute or so until the final results flashed and had Gibbons at 119, the Bruins at 126, and the Spartans at 127.

FlashTiming Detailed Scoring

The Brentwood Bruins become just the second girls team in Tennessee history to qualify for the National meet in Portland. The first, the 2022 Webb Spartans. The Spartans will be up for consideration for an At-Large bid for the second year in a row but the other website that makes those decisions has four California teams and four Colorado teams ranked ahead Webb in their latest national rankings. We should find next week whether or not they make it. California has not yet run their qualifier. 

Areheart, Cheeseman Advance

There is one Spartan that will not have to wait for that announcement however to make their travel plans. Webb School of Knoxville's Carolina Areheart placed second overall right ahead of Webb School of Bell Buckle's Abby Faith Cheeseman who placed third. When I talked to Cheeseman at state, she was on the fence on whether or not she would do FootLocker AND NXR and it wasn't until last night I noticed her name on the entry list. She has qualified for Footlocker all three years and this will be her first trip to Portland. This will be Areheart's second trip as she was part of the 2022 squad that qualified as a team. 

I imagine Cheeseman and Areheart will double back next weekend at McAlpline to try to secure another trip to the West Coast at Footlocker.