Patriots dominate

MUNCIE — The Patriots gathered in a giant circle on the home stretch of the track at Muncie Southside with their arms draped around each other, praying together and thanking each other for their efforts this season.
In what is at its heart an individual sport, Jay County’s focus is instead on the team. That philosophy made the Patriots nearly unbeatable Tuesday.
Though JCHS won just three of 15 sectional events, it put two athletes in the top five eight times. It also finished in the top two in all three relays on the way to a 143-point effort, blowing away runner-up Yorktown by 49 points for its fourth straight championship.
Delta, which led the way with five event wins, was third with 71 points.
“We’re a team. That’s the thing we preach the whole year,” said Jay County coach Brian McEvoy. “We’re not always going to have the most stellar athlete or one that can dominate a sectional … so if we’re going to be successful it’s got to be a team effort.
“Our ones weren’t better than everybody else’s ones, but when we put our ones and twos together and they worked together, we were really hard to handle.”
Senior Katie Snyder led the Patriots, crossing the finish line first every time she stepped on the track. She won both the 100-meter dash and 200 dash, and anchored Jay County’s victory in the 4x100 medley relay.
Twelve JCHS athletes earned regional berths with top-four finishes in individual events and will move on to compete along with all three relays at 6 p.m. Tuesday at North Central in Indianapolis  
“It’s exciting,” said Snyder. “We’ve never had a four-time sectional championship team. …
“We are such a close team. We knew what needed to be done to win.”
Snyder was the No. 1 seed for the 200 dash, but was second in qualifying and found herself in a battle with Yorktown sophomore Brandi Claxton down the stretch. The runners were side-by-side in the final 30 meters, with Snyder leaning and flinging her head forward at the line.
She won in a photo finish, beating Claxton by just three hundredths of a second in 26.52. Emma Laux of the Patriots followed in fourth place.
In the absence of Delta’s defending 100 dash champion Breana Anderson, who suffered an injury to her lower right leg during the long jump, the Patriots were left to dominate. Running next to each other in lanes four and three, Snyder and junior Tasya Smith went one-two in times of 12.8 and 13.13 respectively.
“When you look at the 200-meter dash, it was just a neck-and-neck race with the Yorktown runner. And you could just see it … in Katie that she just physically dug out everything she had left in that final 20 or 30 meters and that was the difference in the race,” McEvoy said.
Snyder and Smith also ran together in the 4x100 relay, teaming with Emma Laux and Lexi Myers for a dominating win. Laux ran second on her opening leg before Smith quickly surged to the lead along the backstretch. Myers extended the advantage, and Snyder cruised home as the Patriots won by nearly two seconds over Yorktown in 51.78.
Abigail Johnson and Emi Minnich traded places with each other in the two longest races of the night, with Johnson taking the runner-up spot in the 1,600 run in 5:38.07 with Minnich following in fifth. Later in the 3,200 run, Minnich was the runner-up slot in 12:36.27 and Johnson took the No. 5 spot.
“Her mile wasn’t exactly what she wanted. I thought she did a good job of shaking it off and coming back in the two mile and really performing,” said McEvoy of Minnich. “A lot of times that’s really hard for a freshman to do. Usually once something goes bad, they kind of back off or they fall apart. She didn’t do that. She came back stronger and refocused. … It really paid off for her.”
Sophomore Malarie Houck picked up three top-five finishes, posting a time of 16.55 to take second in the 100 hurdles. She added a fourth-place finish in the 300 hurdles in 49.65, and placed fifth in the long jump behind fourth-place teammate Ciera Barcus (15 feet, 6¼ inches).
Barcus also took the runner-up spot in the high jump at 4 feet, 10 inches, with Abbi Dunlavy following in fifth. Amber Huelskamp (2:31.45) and Megan Wellman took second and fourth places respectively in the 800 run.
Jay County also claimed two of the top four places in the 400 dash, with Myers coming up with one of the biggest efforts of the day. The sophomore ran in back-to-back events, following up her leg in the winning 4x100 relay by finishing third in the race in 1:02.75 with teammate Morgan Brown just 12 hundredths of a second behind her in fourth.
“That’s the complete definition of unselfishness,” said McEvoy of Myers. “That wasn’t what was best for her by any means, but it was what was best for us and she was willing to do that.”
Myers, Houck, Huelskamp and Brown placed second behind Wes-Del by just one hundredth of a second in 4:20.22 in the 4x400 relay, and Kelli Fortkamp, Johnson, Wellman and Dunlavy finished in 10:34.87 for second in the 4x800 relay. Andrea Bruggeman added a seventh-place finish in the 300 hurdles.
The sectional victory pushed the Patriots’ record to 34-2 this season, during which were also the champions and the Muncie Southside and Blackford invitationals. Their only losses this year came to Bellmont, which also won a sectional title Tuesday, and Celina.
“It’s just a huge accomplishment for our girls and just the level of buy-in that they have for our program and the tradition of it,” said McEvoy. “We talked at the beginning of the year that this was our goal. This is the bar that’s been set … Once you’re at the top, you want to stay there.
“They were a tremendous team together and they worked hard together. They were unselfish. … When you have those things, you’re going to be successful.”[[In-content Ad]]