Cross Country
On September 3, the Orange High cross country team traveled to Jordan High School for the first race of the season. The race consisted of four schools, Orange, Jordan, Research Triangle High School, and Hillside. The girls team did very well, beating all three of the other teams and starting the season 3-0. Orange’s own Adalynn Fleming, Claire Barger, and Julianna Lester were the top three runners in the girls race. The boys team did decently well for the first meet of the season. They were 1-2, winning a close race against Hillside. This was the first race for many of Orange’s runners, and they have been working hard.
The next meet will be on Saturday, September 13 at Hagan Stone Park in Greensboro. They will race at that course twice this year, so it will be a good measure of how fast they have gotten over the course of the year. The team has been running hard all year long and this is just the beginning, they can only get faster from here.
Photo Credit: Will Okun. Megan Joyner goes to kick the ball.[/caption]Megan Joyner, a junior at Orange High School, has recently committed to play soccer for Western Carolina University. As a junior she can’t sign with the school, but as a committee she is able to sign with WCU her senior year.
Joyner visited a number of different colleges including Messiah College in Pennsylvania; Queens University in Charlotte, North Carolina; Lee University in Tennessee; and Wingate University, which is also in Charlotte. Of all of these though, she liked Western the best. “My favorite thing about Western was the atmosphere. It really felt like a family,” she said about her visit there.
Joyner started her soccer career at age five when she played on her first team, the Rainbow League in Chapel Hill. Since then, she has played on a variety of teams including the club team Triangle United. “My favorite thing about soccer is that I can stay active and I’ve met a lot of new friends along the way,” she said. “Some of my closest friendships were made through soccer.”
“I’ve played with Meg for about eight years now, that’s actually how we met,” said Rachel Shinnick, a junior on the Orange varsity soccer team. When asked about her favorite part of playing with Joyner, Shinnick said, “Meg is is such a competitive girl. She plays with a lot of heart.”
Tallie Phillips, a senior, also had something to add about Joyner’s contribution on the field. “She’s really feisty,” Phillips said. “She can be counted on and she’s also really nice.”
Joyner is looking forward to her experience as a soccer player at Western Carolina, but in the meantime she is enjoying every minute of playing with the varsity team at Orange. “The Orange soccer team is like my second family, and Coach Hunter has had a really big influence on me as a person and as a soccer player,” she said. “I’m really going to miss this team.”