Perfect Patriots

The Patriots have won the last two sectional titles and seven championships in all. But this year’s group has already accomplished something none of its predecessors have ever achieved.
With victories Thursday over two of its former conference rivals, the Jay County High School girls track team finished its regular season undefeated.
“That’s huge,” said JCHS coach Brian McEvoy. “We’ve had teams that have lost one, two, three times and won sectionals, but we’ve never had a team clean house the whole way through. … Hopefully we go Tuesday to sectional and finish it off.”
The Patriots, who will try to win their third straight sectional crown Tuesday at Muncie Southside, scored 81.5 points to defeat the visiting Connersville Spartans (64.5) and Southside Rebels (six).
Results from the boys competition were not available at press time.
The double victory Thursday for Jay County (27-0) came on the strength of its field events and sprints.
Ciera Barcus and Maria Murphy swept the field events for the second straight meet, with Barcus taking the long jump by 6 inches over teammate Malarie Houck with a leap of 16 feet, 3 inches. She cleared the bar at 5 feet even to win the high jump with fellow Patriot Abbi Dunlavy in second place.
Murphy led a sweep of the discus with her toss of 127 feet, 5 inches, to finish ahead of teammates Sara Lennartz and Christina Easton. She also took the shot put at 40 feet even.
“We just make a haul there,” said McEvoy of the field events. “Our field events are just so absolutely strong. We haven’t lost shot and disc all year, and we’ve very rarely lost long jump and high jump. And then we have depth there too. That’s huge. That’s a really tough thing to deal with.”
Katie Snyder took the top spot in the 200-meter dash with a time of 26.37 seconds. And with McEvoy trying to give Snyder some rest because of an injured ankle, sophomore Tasya Smith stepped in to win the 100 dash in 13.14.
“Tasya Smith has done a really good job for us this year,” said McEvoy. “She’s been a really solid sprinter for us. … She’s won the 100 both times this week.”
Second-place finishes came from Houck in the 100 hurdles and 300 hurdles, Amber Huelskamp in the 400 dash, Abigail Johnson in the 800 run and Eme Miller in the 1,600 run. The Patriots won the meet despite being without top distance runner Katie Simmons, who was held out as an injury precaution.

[[In-content Ad]]