From the time she stepped onto the track last spring as a junior, Fike High’s Erin Pope has made distance running an exciting endeavor.
Despite the fact that soccer is her primary sport and the one that the Golden Demons senior will attend Lenoir-Rhyne University to play, Pope zipped to the upper echelon of female distance runners in the NCHSAA 3-A ranks. A two-time and likely soon-to-be three-time all-state selection from the North Carolina Soccer Coaches Association, Pope’s brilliance on the pitch was only overshadowed by her phenomenal performances in distance running.
Pope capped her running career by winning the 3,200-meter run Monday at the NCHSAA 3-A track and field championships while setting a meet record 10 minutes, 51.45 seconds in the process. She also won the 3,200 at the NCHSAA 3-A indoor championships in February and placed second in the state 3-A championship cross-country meet in November.
“When she’s running, you just watch the event because you know something magical or something exciting’s about to occur,” said Fike track head coach Cam Avery.
She will graduate as the owner of just about every Fike distance record and as one of the best players in the school’s deep well of soccer history.
Pope also is the Tom Ham Athlete of the Year as presented by The Wilson Times, taking home the ginormous trophy that has been awarded annually for 50 years to the top high school athlete in the Times readership area. It’s also one that she revealed she’s had her eye on for the past two years.
“I saw (former Fike three-sport star) Demari Daniels get it when I was a sophom*ore and I was like, I’m gonna get that!” Pope said with a grin following Fike’s Awards Day ceremony Tuesday morning.
She got it all right, putting forth a legacy that will be hard to top and in a way that was on nobody’s radar at the beginning of 2023. Pope was just the second sophom*ore in Fike history to earn all-state acclaim in soccer but not even she knew that she was going to break records as a runner.
“Well, I already liked running,” she said. “I liked to do 5Ks around Wilson and stuff. So I tried it out.”
GIFTED RUNNER
Pope quickly established herself as a gifted distance runner for Fike last spring. She won the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 races at the 3-A Quad County Conference championships, earning Runner of the Year honors, before qualifying for regional and states. She finished seventh in the 3,200 in Greensboro in 11:37.47 and eighth in the 1,600 in 5:25.41.
When she came out for cross-country last summer, it was Fike head coach Cheryl Gardner’s dream come true.
“I’ve been trying to get her for four years, but with her travel soccer, she never was able to run meets on Wednesday,” Gardner said. “So there was really no point in joining the team if you couldn’t run the meets on Wednesdays because they always had games or practice. So this year, it finally just worked out.”
Pope immediately began turning heads as rival coaches wondered where she came from once she started not only winning every girls cross-country meet by a literal mile in some instances, but posting faster times than most of the male runners in the conference.
In the middle of her busy schedule that included playing for North Carolina Football Club 05 Girls Elite soccer, Pope, one of the top students in her senior class, found time to run a half-marathon.
“What other high school athlete runs cross-country, plays travel soccer and then trains for half-marathons?” Gardner asked incredulously.
She won her age division, too.
Pope won the 3-A East Regional cross-country meet, breaking the course record in Northeast Creek Park in Jacksonsville with a time of 18:23.78. But Pope, still learning the nuances of distance running, went out quick in the state championship meet and couldn’t stave off First Flight sophom*ore Morgan Miller, who beat Pope for the state title.
It was the latest chapter in a budding rivalry that saw Miller beat Pope in the regional and state outdoor track meets in 2023 and continue with Pope’s regional cross-country win. But for the ultra-competitive Pope, the runner-up finish provided all the inspiration she would need.
“Ever since Morgan beat her at cross-country, she’s never beat her again,” Gardner said.
STATE CHAMPION
Pope won the 500; 1,000; 1,600 and 3,200 at the Quad County winter championships at Fike then ruled the 3,200 at JDL Fast Track in Winston-Salem with a time of 11:05.51 to edge Miller for Fike’s first girls indoor track state title in a decade. She also finished second in the 1,600 behind North Lincoln’s Olivia Ferraro, who would win that event in May at the outdoor championships and scored 18 points by herself to give the Demons a 13th-place finish.
Pope, who won the 1,600 and the 3,200 at the regional meet at Croatan, took third in the 1,600 then claimed her second career state championship in record time in the 3,200. Miller briefly passed Pope but that was all the Fike senior needed to get the job done as she reclaimed the lead.
Is there a switch she flips in those situations?
“Yeah, I think my body just knows when I have to go,” Pope said.
For Avery, in his first year as the head coach for track at Fike, having Pope on the team was more than a blessing. It was an experience.
“She is special. She is phenomenal,” said Avery. “She’s a special one to have. She works harder than any athlete I’ve had the privilege of really being with. I mean, she works at a level that is almost to a point that you really can’t comprehend. Then when it’s time to perform, I mean, she just gets after it. She don’t blink. She just goes and just keeps coming at you time and time again. So she’s special.”
SOCCER STAR
Despite everything Pope has accomplished as a runner, she is truly magnificent on the soccer field as well. Displaying bursts of speed that gives one pause to wonder what kind of sprinter she might be, the 5-foot-3, 110-pound Pope zips around the pitch as an attacking center midfielder in every sense of the word.
“She’s got an attribute you can’t teach, which is quality speed, and she never gets tired,” said Fike soccer head coach Chris Mizelle. “So you can play her wherever you want to. And she can be quality at that spot. She could play an outside back if she wanted to; she could play a wing; she played central midfield for us; she played forward for us. Her height might be a little bit crippling as a goalkeeper but other than that. I mean, I don’t know where do you find players that you can plug in wherever and probably your best option at that position? So it’s really fortunate for me to have players like that. And exciting to be able to be around, not just good players like that, but she’s such an awesome person. Great student and I am personally very fortunate to have her around me for the last four years and even longer.”
Fike went 62-16-4, including a 19-4-2 mark this year, in Pope’s four years. She’s been picked to play in the North Carolina Coaches Association East-West All-Star Game in July and the Clash of the Carolinas in Charlotte in June. Pope has ranked in the top 25 nationally in assists each year at Fike. She finished her Demons career with more than 125 goals and more than 100 assists.
“That’s pretty difficult to do,” Mizelle said. “And not to mention she did it in basically three and a half years because her freshman year was COVID-shortened to like 10 games. So, she’s an exceptional soccer talent that’s very well recognized and deservedly so. She’s got a scholarship to go keep doing it for four more years.”
Pope’s four years at Fike were achievement-filled. In every area, she excelled and excited.
“I think it’s pretty solid,” she said of her legacy. “Like, I’ll be remembered for a while, hopefully.”
Wilson Times Athletes of the Year
1974 — Clay Johnson, Fike
1975 — Stan Johnson, Fike
1976 — John Virgil, Elm City
1977 — Greg Artis, Fike
1978 — Gurnest Brown, Fike
1979 — Angela Armstrong, Fike
1980 — Willie Harris, Hunt
1981 — Moe Ruffin, Fike
1982 — Dennis Barron, Beddingfield
1983 — Izel Jenkins, Fike
1984 — Brian Harris, Fike
1985 — Anthony Thompson, Fike
1986 — Dennis Tripp, Farmville Central
1987 — Pam and Phyllis Gorham, SouthWest Edgecombe
1988 — Tyrone Joyner, Farmville Central
1989 — Donald Barnes, Hunt
1990 — Morris Foreman, Farmville Central
1991 — Terrance Howell, SouthWest Edgecombe
1992 — Jeffrey Savage, Fike
1993 — Corey Thomas, Beddingfield
1994 — Latonya Joyner, Beddingfield
1995 — Sabrina Thompson, Fike
1996 — Sabrina Thompson, Fike
1997 — Rikki co*ckrell, Southern Nash
1998 — Julius Peppers, Southern Nash
1999 — John Green, Beddingfield
2000 — William Hesmer, Hunt
2001 — Joe Warenda, Greenfield
2002 — Georgia Davis, Southern Nash
2003 — Ginny Farris, Fike
2004 — Kendall Liner, Beddingfield; Connor Bedgood, Fike
2005 — Requan Boyette, Fike
2006 — October Harris, Beddingfield
2007 — Linwan Euwell, SouthWest Edgecombe
2008 — Laura Hanson, Fike
2009 — Jeremy Atkinson, Fike
2010 — Casey Elliott, Beddingfield
2011 — Meredith Pruden, Fike
2012 — Parker Lamm, Hunt; Josh King, Fike
2013 — Jordan Sharpe, Greenfield
2014 — Dexter Wright, Hunt
2015 — Dwanya Williams-Sutton, Greenfield
2016 — Tre Wade, Greene Central
2017 — Kenneth Sims, Beddingfield
2018 — Coby White, Greenfield
2019 — Darius Edmundson, Southern Nash
2020 — Keishon Porter, SouthWest Edgecombe
2021 — Jayleen Bullock, Fike
2022 — Demari Daniels, Fike
2023 — Landon Baker, Southern Nash
2024 — Erin Pope, Fike
