Last Week, High Point University Ran Away With Two Awards

High Point University has done an impressive job in the Big South, being able to be a consistent contender for conference championships and producing solid teams season-after-season. Lacrosse is probably the most successful sport at the school, as the women’s team wins the conference title year-after-year, and the men’s team beats traditional powers, such as Duke and Virginia last year.

A couple of other sports that are very successful at High Point University are cross-country and track. In recent years especially, there have been a few individual athletes who seem to place near the top of invitational leaderboards, which earns them Big South Weekly honors.

Off to a fast start (no pun intended) this year, High Point junior Famke Heinst has already won two Big South Women’s Cross Country Runner of the Week awards, including this past week when the Panthers traveled up to the Panorama Farms Invitational in Earlysville, VA, which was hosted by the University of Virginia. In the invitational, Heinst finished in fourth place out of a field of 156 runners with a time of 20:36 in the 6k race. Heinst beat out runners from powerhouses Michigan State, Virginia, and Kentucky en route to the best performance for an individual Panther (HPU finished seventh as a team). Way to put High Point University on the map, Famke!

Joining Heinst in the Big South Weekly Awards was her teammate, Hocine Bouchrak, the junior from Alicante, Spain who won Big South Men’s Cross Country Runner of the Week. In the same invitational, Bouchrak finished sixth out of 161 runners with a personal-best time of 24:16.6 in the 8k race. Bouchrak’s time was a Panther best, and it helped lead HPU to a 10th-place finish. As did Heinst, Bouchrak beat out runners from Virginia and Michigan State.

High Point will have a couple weeks of rest (and preparation) before they host their annual VertCross invitational, which will be on Friday, October 18 at Beeson Park in Kernersville.

Keep on running to the Big South Title, Panthers!