JCHS grad earns honor

MARION — As a senior at Jay County High School, Brandon Reynard led the Patriot boys track team to its first sectional title in a quarter-century. And he earned a state medal with a fifth-place finish in his junior season.
Now running for Indiana Tech, he continues to pull in the accolades.
Reynard, JCHS class of 2009, earned All-America honors Saturday with his performance at the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics Outdoor Track Championships at Indiana Wesleyan University.
Amanda Johnson (JCHS – 2008) also picked up a top-eight finish at the meet for the host Wildcats.
Competing in the 400-meter hurdles, Reynard was sixth in the preliminary round at 53.74 seconds. He finished ninth in the semi-finals in 53.05, earning the last qualifying spot for the championship race by just one hundredth of a second over Slater Ezell of Azusa Pacific.
The sophomore made the most of his final race of the season, running more than a second faster than he had in the semifinals and shattering the previous Warrior record of 52.25 set by Zac Chapman in 2009. He finished in 51.95 to take sixth place just two hundredths of a second behind fifth-place finisher Edward Morrow of Point Loma.
The top six athletes in each event earn All-America honors, and Kyle Clark of Azusa Pacific was well behind Reynard in seventh place at 53.02.
Johnson, a state medalist in the 800 run while at Jay County, looked as if she might earn All-America status as well as her team finished sixth in the preliminary round of the 4x800 relay.
Angi Wolgemuth, Cassidy Wagner, Kayla Ewert and Johnson went on to slash seven seconds in the championship race, only to have their time of 9:11.52 leave them in eighth place.[[In-content Ad]]