Indian girls send five to regional (05/22/06)

MINSTER, Ohio — At the biggest meet of the season, the Fort Recovery girls turned in their best effort.

Despite their small numbers, the Indians completed a 48-point effort Saturday and sent five athletes to the regional round as they finished in a three-way tie for fifth place at the Minster district meet. They were last among the 10 Midwest Athletic Conference teams a week earlier, but pulled even with St. Henry and New Knoxville in district competition and placed ahead of Marion Local (45 - eighth) and Parkway (39 - ninth).

Minster won the district title with 91.5 points and was followed by Delphos St. John’s (83.5), Coldwater (75) and New Bremen (58) as the nine MAC squads finished atop the 16-team field.

Fort Recovery’s boys team managed 13 points for 12th out of 15 teams. New Bremen won with 114, and Waynesfield-Goshen was second with 94.

“The MAC meet was kind of tough for these kids,” said coach Jason Grieshop. “We didn’t run bad, but both the boys and girls finished 10th. Now you come here to district, there are more schools to spread the field out a little bit and we competed a lot better as a team. We still don’t have the numbers to finish (at the top), but we finished well.”

Holly Stein highlighted the day for the Tribe as she became the team’s lone qualifier in a pair of individual events.

After breaking her own school record in the discus for a third-place finish on the first day of competition Thursday, Stein launched her first toss in the shot put at 37 feet, 41/2 inches. It was all she would need.

She had three more attempts clear the 36-foot mark, but her first throw remained her best and was good for a runner-up finish to Crestview’s Shae Dietrich (39 feet, 73/4 inches). Leslie Oliver of Ridgemont was a distant third at 34 feet, 4 inches.

Stein only qualified for the regional in the shot put last season as she and Vicki Roessner (300 hurdles) were the lone Indians to move on. She’s through in both events this time around as the Tribe will send five athletes to the regional meet in five events.

“Holly finished what she started with discus Thursday ... she came in today and finished second in the shot, which is right where she was seeded,” said Grieshop. “She threw well.

“Overall we’re extremely pleased. We had a lot of good efforts today. A lot of people ran their best times of the year.”

Among them was Roessner as she and Mindy Vogel also qualified for the regional meet in individual events.

Roessner ran one more race than she bargained for — the 100-meter hurdle semifinals was contested twice because of hurdle interference — but still turned in a banner day.

Having already run 300 meters worth of 100 hurdles, she came up with one of the best times of her career in the 300 race. She posted her top time this season — 49.49 seconds — and was just three hundredths off her career best to place third.

Roessner also had a tremendous day in the 100 hurdles despite falling short of a regional berth. Seeded 12th after the preliminaries, she qualified seventh for the finals and finished fifth in 17.59.

“Vicki ran some of her best races of her life in the 100 hurdles, then she also ran the fastest time of (the season) in the 300 hurdles. That was phenomenal,” said Grieshop. “She got fifth in the 100 and third in the 300 and last year she just barely made it out (in the 300). There was no doubt in our mind that she made it (this year). In the 100 she finished fifth, when last year she didn’t even make the finals. That’s an enormous improvement.”

Vogel was one second short of the personal-best time she turned in at last week’s MAC meet, but still had a tremendous finish.

She was in fourth place at the mid-point of the race, dropped to fifth, then left New Bremen’s Lori Timmerman in the dust to battle Katie Dalinghaus of Minster. Dalinghaus looked set for third place, but Vogel nosed by her in the final steps of the race to finish in third by just three hundredths in 2-minutes, 23.61 seconds.

“If you look at last year, 2:23 would have won regional,” said Grieshop. “This year it got third at district. Who’s to say, maybe next week at regional she can get third or fourth and make it to state.”

Tina Roessner added a couple of top-eight finishes with a pair of career-best times. She placed fifth in the 3,200 run in 12:36, and was also sixth in the 1,600 run with a time of 5:44.

Fellow freshman Anne Koesters was eighth in the shot put at 32 feet, 81/2 inches.

Phil Gantenbein was the top Indian boy Saturday as he finished sixth in the 800 run at 2:04.53. He fell short of a regional berth by just over one second.

Mitch Fullenkamp ran a career-best 4:54 for seventh in the 1,600 run, and joined Gantenbein, Matt Vagedes and Eric Lamm for seventh in the 4x400 relay in 3:41.78.

In Thursday’s competition the Fort Recovery girls team of Vogel, Tiff Gaerke, Tina Roessner and Vicki Roessner earned a regional berth by placing fourth in the 4x800 relay in 10:02.24. Gaerke tied for third in the high jump, but lost a jump-off for the final two regional spots. Vagedes was fifth in the pole vault, and the boys 4x800 relay team of Fullenkamp, Lamm, Gantenbein and Jim Roessner was seventh.[[In-content Ad]]