Fort Recovery girls reach regional (10/24/05)

SPENCERVILLE — For the first time in at least five seasons, the Indians will get to run beyond the district.

Fort Recovery’s girls cross country team advanced to the regional round Saturday as they finished third at the nine-team Spencerville district meet Saturday. The Tribe finished with 99 points, placing only behind defending state champion Division III No. 1 Minster (15) and No. 7 Lincolnview (55).

The top 16 individuals and top four teams qualified for the regional meet.

The Indian boys were last in their eight-team field at Spencerville with 200 points. Minster took the title with 33 points.

Mindy Vogel paced the Fort Recovery girls team as it placed two runners in the top 16.

Vogel finished seventh overall with a time of 20-minutes, 40 seconds. She was the first runner outside of the two state-ranked teams to cross the finish line.

After two more Minster runners — all seven finished in the top 10 — and one from Lincolnview, Tina Roessner broke the ranked teams’ stronghold again. Roessner, a freshman, took 11th place as she finished two seconds ahead of Lincolnview’s Kylie Honigford in 20:56.

Sam Bihn ran near her personal-best time to take 23rd in 21:51, and Sandra Sudhoff battled through sinus problems to take 28th in 22:16. Lindsay Sudhoff completed the team score in 30th at 22:40, Sam Staugler finished 35th in 22:58 and Leanne Pottkotter was 46th in 24:17.

“We couldn’t be any more proud of the girls ...” said Tribe coach Jason Grieshop. “They didn’t all run their best times of the year, but it is about the best we have looked as a team. They were all very determined to finally get back to regionals.”

The Fort Recovery boys did not send any runners on to the next round as Mitch Fullenkamp finished just short in 19th place at 18:24. Jim Roessner was 24th in 18:39.

Tyler Huelskamp ran a personal-best time to finish 54th in 21:19, Matt Heinrichs was 55th in 21:52 and Joel Bey took 58th in 23:52.[[In-content Ad]]