Senior was primed for final season

Editor’s note: Jay County and Fort Recovery spring student athletes are dealing with a new reality of not having school in session as well as having their sports season canceled. This “Senior Spotlight” series will recognize some of those spring senior athletes who had their final year as a Patriot or Indian cut short.

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The past three years, Calli Stigleman had to miss preseason conditioning for track.

Her involvement with the Patriot cheer team didn’t allow her to properly prepare to run in the spring.

But for her final year of high school, she decided to give up being a cheerleader for the basketball season. Therefore, she was able to focus on her sprinting much earlier than normal.

Oh, what could have been.

“I felt like I was going to be really in shape,” said Stigleman, a rural Redkey resident who turned 18 Saturday. “I felt ready for the season.”

Stigleman, like every other senior in Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and nearly 30 other states, is suddenly without their final year of high school athletics as the coronavirus pandemic has nixed sports across the globe.

“It sucks,” she said. “It was going to be probably the best year, honestly.”

Stigleman would have been entering her fourth year running for JCHS track coach Brian McEvoy.

She was part of a 4x100-meter relay team that won Allen County Athletic Conference and sectional championships, while also helping the Patriots win the program’s first sectional title since claiming five in a row from 2010 to ’14.

Stigleman was a three-time regional qualifier in the 200 dash, and made regional in the 100 dash twice. Her best finish at regional — the Ben Davis regional is generally one of the state’s fastest — was 14th in both sprinting events. She earned the place in the 100 dash in 2018 and finished in that spot in the 200 last season.

She was hoping to advance past sectional yet again.

“Make it to regional for the fourth time in a row,” she said of the expectations she set for herself before the season was officially canceled April 2.

Stigleman’s successes on the track almost never happened. While she dominated as a sprinter at West Jay, she had to make a decision upon entering high school because she also played softball in the spring.

The daughter of Shannon and Christa, Calli comes from an athletic family. Shannon was an accomplished baseball player at Jay County and Purdue. Christa ran track and was a cheerleader too. Her older brother, Cole, who graduated in 2018, was a four-year starter on the baseball diamond.

Whether Calli would follow her father and brother and play on a diamond or take after her mother on the track was up in the air. Some prodding and encouraging, including comparing her times as an eighth grader to the sectional and regional fields, got her to choose track instead of softball.

It’s a decision she is glad to have made.

“Honestly, all the girls, we get along really well,” she said of what she enjoys most about her track team. “The coaches, McEvoy has always been a big part of my track experience.”

She also noted the impact Amber (Huelskamp) Houck had on her when she became an assistant to McEvoy.

“All the girls, we just get along,” she continued. “Always have fun. No drama. It’s pretty nice.”

Some athletes have the pleasure of going their entire prep careers injury free. Stigleman is not one of those, as she’s dealt with shin splints and other ailments to a sprinter’s tools — her legs. The affliction started the end of her sophomore season, and she never fully recovered.

Even entering this year, she said she did not have a clear bill of health.

“Any time we have a meet I just kind of push through even though it’s painful,” she said.

Stigleman, who is also a member of National Honor Society, plans to attend IU-Kokomo to study radiography. Initially, she wanted to become a dentist after taking the health class at Jay County. But she found something better. After watching an X-ray being taken, she knew she had her intended career path.

“It seemed like something I see myself doing,” she said.

The thing she’ll miss most about Jay County is the close-knit feeling of the community.

“All the close friendships I’ve had for the past 12 years or whatever it is,” she said. “I guess, being a part of everything, having that small-town, where everybody knows everybody.”