Wellman wins second invite

Injuries made it difficult for Megan Wellman to even compete in consecutive races a year ago.
Now, in the final two invitationals of her high school career, she has posted back-to-back victories.
Wellman, a Jay County High School senior, owned the second half of Saturday’s race at Muncie SportsPlex, taking the Delta Invitational by six seconds over Greenfield-Central’s Sydney Cook.
“I can’t believe it. It’s unreal to me, being here, doing this, with the struggles I had the last two seasons,” said Wellman, who also won the Yorktown Invitational on Sept. 19. “And my team, they’ve just pushed me so much, and my family and friends. I couldn’t have done this without them. It’s a really great feeling.”
She led a short-handed Jay County squad that posted all career-best times to 127 points to tie with New Castle in the eight-team field. The Trojans took fifth place based on the sixth-runner tiebreaker.
No. 18 Fishers claimed the top spot with 39 points, followed by host Delta (64), Centerville (96) and Greenfield-Central (100).
The Patriot boys were seventh out of 10 teams with 204 points. Cathedral took the win with 31 points ahead of Greenfield Central (56) and New Castle (103).
“They ran great,” said JCHS coach Leah Wellman, whose teams will return to the SportsPlex in two weeks for the sectional meet. “We have a lot of newcomers that are on our varsity, and so for them to get that experience here, it helped.”
Megan Wellman didn’t look like a frontrunner early, purposely hanging back and running along the right side of the pack on the opening straightaway. By the mile, she had made her first move, climbing all the way to fourth place.
As the lead runners looped around the southwest corner of the SportsPlex the first time, she attacked again, moving all the way to the front. She surged ahead of Cook by a couple of meters, and then did nothing but open her advantage during the final third of the race.
Wellman was in control coming down the home stretch, winning by nearly seven seconds in 19 minutes, 32 seconds. That’s nearly two minutes faster than the 21:17.46 and 21:13.07 she posted at sectional and regional respectively last year after injuries limited her to just three regular-season races.
“She’s running great right now,” said Leah Wellman of her sister. “She’s right on track with where we’ve envisioned her to be to be her best for semi-state. State’s her goal … She put in a lot of miles this summer and really wanted to come back.”
Juniors Erika Kunkler and Taylor Homan were both steady behind Megan Wellman for the Patriots, who were missing Kellie Fortkamp and Gabby Kunkler because of injuries.
Erika Kunkler was 15th at the mile mark before slipping to 18th at the 2-mile and holding that position to the end with a time of 22:04.65. Homan followed a similar pattern, running 22nd at the mile, sliding a few spots to 26th at the 2-mile and then holding off four runners in a sprint to the finish in 23:05.55.
Travis Barton and Alex LeMaster traded the lead role on and off for the Jay County boys, with Barton running 27th at the mile mark and LeMaster two spots behind. LeMaster had moved ahead of his teammate by the 2-mile, and then Barton pushed ahead again as he led the squad in 18:20 for 32nd place with LeMaster two seconds behind in 33rd.
Skyler Myers, Matthew Cox and Dallas Dudelston finished in 45th, 46th and 48th respectively with times of 19:21, 19:27 and 19:34.
“Right now it’s kind of iffy who our top seven are going to be, so it was good to see some of these kids come out and run it,” said Leah Wellman, who was missing Taylor Smeltzer and Michael Denney because of injuries. “I’m just really happy with how well they all did. It’s great to have a good meet like this going into (Allen County Athletic Conference) and sectional.”
The Patriots will compete in the ACAC meet Saturday at South Adams before returning Oct. 10 to the SportsPlex for the sectional race.
Destiny Berry (47th – 26:35.76) and Vivienne Kunkler (50th – 27:41.27), both freshmen, also competed for the girls team Saturday. Sayger Holcomb (56th – 20:34) and Dustin Bricker (63rd – 21:27) rounded out the boys squad.