With four of its top five runners back, and the addition of senior Ivana Zelov, Cary Academy’s girls cross country team took a big step up Sept. 15 at the Adidas Raleigh Cross Country Invitational at SAS Soccer Park.

Competing against some of the state’s top teams, the Chargers scored 106 points — 76 back of champion Chapel Hill High, but ahead of a tightly packed field of top public schools. Burlington Williams High was third (112 points), followed by East Chapel Hill High (113), Northwest Guilford High (114) and Enloe High (148). It was the first time Cary Academy ever entered the top-seeded race, and the girls made the best of it.

“It definitely was a breakthrough for us,” said Hall, who led the Chargers to an NCISSA state cross country title a year ago. “We’ve been pretty competitive the last couple of years, and we thought we were competitive enough to step up to the championship division.”

As expected, the Chargers were led by junior Rachel Park, who was third with a time of 19:42. Junior Danielle Curran (21st, 21:08), first-year runner Zelov (22nd, 21:11), senior Sarah Helfer (25th, 21:32) and freshman Jenn Johnson (50th, 22:40) rounded out the Chargers’ top five.

Conrad said the girls have been building the program up a little each year. Cary Academy’s enrollment of about 400 in its high school makes the team’s performance even more remarkable since many public schools have enrollments of up to 2,000 students.

“Some of these girls have been coming up through the program, and we’ve been getting better and better,” Hall said.

Park said the girls went into the Adidas meet just hoping to get some good times, not expecting to finish as runner-up.

Before the race, Park said she thought to herself, “‘Oh, it’s the championship. There’s so many good teams here.’ I didn’t even think we could place.”

Helfer, who has been running for the Chargers since seventh grade, said the team had a plan to run as hard as they could.

“We knew it was going to be a really competitive meet,” she said. “We knew that Chapel Hill (the state’s top-ranked high school team) would be out of our league. We were happy and surprised to get second place.”

Helfer said the Chargers’ program has reached a new level of success.

“Over the past few years we’ve been gradually just building up the team and getting more serious,” she said. “We’ve been training hard.”

Helfer said the Chargers want another state title.

“We have our state championship goal always in our minds — defending that,” she said. Said Park: “I think after winning the state championship, people really want to be part of it. I think it just builds momentum.”