Fugiett seventh at Delta

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MUNCIE — Sophia Fugiett led the pack as it thinned out, heading east on the course at Muncie SportsPlex after the first few hundred yards.

Over the course of the next 3 miles she wasn’t able to keep up with the top runners from the eighth-ranked team in Indiana, but she beat most everybody else.

Fugiett, a Jay County High School freshman, finished seventh Saturday in the Navy race at the Delta Invitational, leading the Patriots to fifth place in the nine-team field.

JCHS scored 144 points while Fishers ran away with the big-school title with 20. Centerville was a distant runner-up with 75 points, followed by Greenfield Central (85) and the host Eagles (86).

The Patriot boys were seventh out of 10 teams with 198 points. Fifth-ranked Cathedral scored 27 for first place, and 19th-ranked Franklin Central (40) was second.

Lapel’s girls and Blue River Valley’s boys won the Gold (small school) championships.

Fugiett wasn’t shy at the starting gun, running out to the lead with a couple of Fishers competitors right behind her. She dropped back to sixth at the mile mark and was sitting in eighth after two miles of running in temperatures in the mid-80s.

She remained eighth as she reached the slight downhill toward the finish line, but she and Erin Johnson, Fishers’ No. 5 runner, were running nearly side-by-side. Fugiett surged ahead as they reached the bottom of the slope and pulled away in the final meters to take seventh in 21 minutes, 30.7 seconds.

Fishers runners claimed four of the top six spots, with the others going to Greenfield-Central’s Audrey Brinkruff (fourth) and Centerville’s Kayla Newman (fifth).

Miranda Alig, another freshman, was the No. 2 runner for the Patriots, as she was 15th after the mile mark. She settled in at the No. 20 spot after 2 miles before picking off one runner in the final third of the race to place 19th in 24:07.6.

Junior Skyler Myers led the JCHS boys team as its only runner to place in the top 25. He finished in 18:10.6 for 23rd place.

Alex LeMaster placed 35th in 19:09.3, followed by Tayler Smeltzer (40th - 10:29.4) and Mitchel Winner (42nd - 19:40.6). Candler Hedges rounded out the team score as he took 58th in 21:52.2.

Lita Chowning (27:38.1) and Ella Roessner (27:41.6) were nearby each other throughout the girls race and placed 35th and 37th respectively for Jay County. Elizabeth McDowell completed the team score in 46th in 30:58.1.

Also running for the Patriots were Catherine Stafford (50th) for the girls and Matthew Minnich (59th) and Mason Winner (61st) for the boys.



Middle school

Lydia Keihn won the individual title and led East Jay to the team championship.

The Chiefs scored 43 points to finish ahead of Delta (66) in the 12-team field in the girls race.

The EJMS boys nearly made it a clean sweep, scoring 34 points to finish as the runners-up just two behind the host Eagles. Selma was a distant third with 100.

Keihn was mostly unchallenged as she established herself as the front-runner early, pacing a small lead pack that also included her teammates Mara Bader and Lindy Wood, and West Jay’s Raven Weaver. She was all alone in front by the mid-point of the race and won by nearly 30 seconds in 12 minutes, 1.5 seconds.

Bader took third in 12:46.1, and then three Jay County runners in a row — Weaver (12:56.7), Wood (13:23.1) and Rachel Heitkamp (13:23.7) — crossed the finish line consecutively in sixth, seventh and eighth. Emily Dues completed the race in 14:31.6 for 24th place to finish off the EJMS team score.

East Jay’s boys also had four runners in the top 10, with Cameron Clark leading the way in second place in 11:21.4. Trailing him were Tony Wood (fifth - 11:28.6), Thomas LeMaster (sixth - 11:38.1) and Dustin Harris (ninth - 11:44.2). Tyler Manor completed the team’s effort in 12th, crossing in 11:51.7.

Aaron Funkhouser topped the list of West Jay boys in 11th in 11:51.4. Trenton Alexander was next for the Eagles in 27th with a time of 12:23.2, followed by Gage Baker (38th - 12:44.2), Skyler Bee (64th - 13:09.5) and Isaiah Weekley (81st - 13:38.5).

Joining Weaver for the WJMS girls were Lizzie Dollar (34th - 15:00.5), Makinsey Murphy (38th - 15:19.9), Aubri Hatzell (41st - 15:22.9) and Taryn Caldwell (76th - 17:08.3).