Practice brings optimism, questions

This week is exciting.
It’s the first week of practice for fall high school sports in Indiana.
After a summer off, players are excited to get back to competition. Coaches are optimistic about the prospects for the coming season.
I’m interested in seeing how it all plays out, and below are a few of the questions to which I’m looking forward to learning the answers.

Can the Jay County High School girls cross country team win its seventh straight sectional title?
Winning a sectional title is rarely easy, and the challenges for the Patriots this year will be significant.
Only one of the top five JCHS runners from last season’s sectional meet will be back this year, with each of the top three — Katie Simmons, Eme Miller and Liz Lennartz — lost to graduation and junior Miranda Gerber having transferred to Norwell.
Jay County will need to get strong leadership from juniors Abigail Johnson, who finished 11th at the 2011 sectional, and Kaitlin Hemmelgarn. And newcomers Abbi Dunlavy, a junior, and Emi Minnich and Megan Wellman, both freshmen, will need to make an immediate impact.

Which freshmen will step in and make immediate contributions?
Last fall the Patriots got big first-year efforts from Alex Abbott on the soccer field and Malarie Houck and Bre McIntire on the volleyball court.
Based on their middle school careers and chats with coaches, there are several young athletes who could make their mark this season.
Emi Minnich and Megan Wellman, mentioned above, both project as top-five runners for the cross country team. Fred Medler has a couple of freshmen — Ava Kunkler and Kylie Osborne — who are slated to see major playing time. And in practice this week Gabbie Mann has been showing some fancy footwork on the soccer field.
All of them, and more of their classmates, could be key for their teams this year.

Will the Jay County High School football team put together its first winning season since taking the 2007 sectional title?
Football for the Patriots has been mostly a struggle in the four years since topping Muncie Southside for their only sectional championship in school history.
In the next three seasons, JCHS put together just a 7-23 record. It showed improvement last year, going 4-6 on the field, and picked up a fifth win thanks to a Delta forfeit. And this year it hopes to get back to plus-.500 football.
As I see it, the key games to accomplishing that goal this year come against Boozier’s former squad, Blackford, and the only remaining teams on the schedule that were members of the Olympic Athletic Conference — Muncie Southside and Connersville.[[In-content Ad]]