May 27, 2021 at 1:31 a.m.
Two to state
Patriots have two qualifiers for first time in team history
Two to state
INDIANAPOLIS — Elisa Parazzi missed on her first attempt at three heights in a row.
Kinsey Shannon was slower out of the blocks than she would have liked.
At the regional level, misses and milliseconds can be season-ending. For the pair of Patriots, they served simply as motivation to make sure they would see another week.
Parazzi earned the first regional championship in a decade for Jay County High School’s girls track team and Shannon joined her in securing a state berth at Tuesday’s meet at Ben Davis. It marks the first time in school history that the Patriots have sent multiple athletes to the girls track state finals.
Abby Benter and Gabi Bilbrey also added top-eight finishes as JCHS scored 22 points to place 11th out of 28 scoring teams. North Central won the title with 79, followed by Cathedral (64) and Bishop Chatard (61.75).
“I couldn’t be prouder of the girls,” said Jay County coach Joe Imel, whose team posted the program’s best regional finish since placing ninth in 2011. “This is the time where you run the best that you can and run the best times that you’ve ran all year, and they answered that.
“And two to state is absolutely amazing.”
Parazzi was the favorite entering the regional after recording a career-best leap of 5 feet, 6 inches, to win the sectional title last week at Delta. But after clearing the bar easily at each of the first two heights and then passing at 5 feet, 1 inch, she missed her first attempt at 5 feet, 2 inches, before making it over on her second try.
Again at 5 feet, 3 inches, the bar came tumbling down for the Patriot on try No. 1 while Victoria Hardnett of Muncie Central sailed over on her first attempt. Parazzi again came through on her second opportunity, but the previous miss put Hardnett in the driver’s seat to win the regional. (Misses are the tiebreaker in high jump.)
Needing to clear the bar at 5 feet, 4 inches, for a chance at the regional title, Parazzi again missed on her first attempt. But so did the other four remaining jumpers.
Just over three minutes later, she soared.
Parazzi slipped over the bar on her second try at 5 feet, 4 inches, clapped as she popped out of the pit and jogged an eighth of a lap clockwise around the outside of the track to hug her exchange student sister Stefanie Dietrich in celebration.
No one else was able to match her, making Parazzi the Patriots’ first regional champion since Maria Murphy in discus in 2011.
“You have three attempts, and if you fail the first one, it doesn’t matter, you have other attempts,” said Parazzi, an exchange student from Italy, who will return to Ben Davis June 5 to compete in the IHSAA Girls Track and Field State Finals. “That’s what helped me because I failed all first attempts I had. But I was sure I wanted to do it. I wanted to win. And I won.”
Shannon was the No. 3 seed for the 400-meter dash Tuesday — the top three athletes in each event earn a state berth — but her odds of advancing quickly diminished.
The JCHS senior didn’t get out of the blocks as quickly as she would have liked. At the mid-point of the race, she was near the back of the field. As the runners made the turn for the home stretch, it appeared her career in her best event was over.
Then, suddenly, with 10 meters left, she was in it.
A week after rallying the Patriots’ 4x400 relay team for a regional berth, Shannon fought for a personal comeback. She surged through the final steps, edging ahead of Heritage Christian’s Carsyn Burdine at the finish line to claim third place by just 12 hundredths of a second.
“I really didn’t think I had to because those two girls were kicking it in,” said an out-of-breath Shannon to her teammates after the race.
She trailed only defending state champion Ramiah Elliott (55.72) of North Central and Kacyra Simmons (58.93) of the host Giants with her career-best time of 59.47.
“I just kept going,” added Shannon. “I was dead on the last stretch but I was like, ‘Just finish.’ … And, I don’t know. I just did it. It was a killer. …
“It’s a shock, finally, as a senior going to state. It’s amazing. I did not think I was ever going to get past regional.”
As shocked as Shannon was, it’s difficult to imagine anyone having had a more surprising seven days than Benter.
The Patriot senior placed fourth in the 100-meter high hurdles at the Delta sectional. Only the top three are guaranteed to move on to the regional meet.
But her time proved good enough to earn her a spot filling out the regional field. It was so good, she entered the meet seeded ninth of 16 runners.
Then she ran the seventh-fastest time — her career-best mark of 16.24 — in the preliminaries to earn a spot in the finals. She couldn’t quite match that time in the last race of her career, but still climbed two more spots for a fifth-place regional finish. (She was just one hundredth of a second behind fourth-place finisher Ella Garvin of New Castle in 16.35 while each of the top three broke the 16-second mark.)
“I was just surprised,” said Benter, who was also 12th in the 300 hurdles in 49.91. “I was lucky if I could get ninth. That’s how I felt.”
Bilbrey also climbed the ladder in the closing weeks of her sophomore season.
After knocking on the door to triple digits for most of the year, she finally broke through last week with her runner-up sectional toss of 100 feet, 3.5 inches. That distance made her the No. 11 seed, just on the outside of the top nine required to make finals.
Like her teammates, she delivered when the pressure was on. Bilbrey qualified for the finals and improved her career-best distance with a throw of 102 feet, 1 inch, to place seventh.
“Gabi has been all year between 95 and 98 feet in the discus,” said Imel. “I knew — we all knew — that she could throw 100 or over 100. She’s just a really hard worker.”
Kylie Klopfenstein, the only other individual Patriot competing Tuesday, had a toss of 35 feet, 0.5 inches, for 11th in the shot put.
Sophia Fugiett, Lindy Wood, Molly Muhlenkamp and Willow Hardy posted a time of 11 minutes, 0.56 seconds, for 13th in the 4x800 relay. Shea Bailey, Makinsey Murphy, Shannon and Benter were 14th in the 4x400 relay in 4 minutes, 24.75 seconds.
Kinsey Shannon was slower out of the blocks than she would have liked.
At the regional level, misses and milliseconds can be season-ending. For the pair of Patriots, they served simply as motivation to make sure they would see another week.
Parazzi earned the first regional championship in a decade for Jay County High School’s girls track team and Shannon joined her in securing a state berth at Tuesday’s meet at Ben Davis. It marks the first time in school history that the Patriots have sent multiple athletes to the girls track state finals.
Abby Benter and Gabi Bilbrey also added top-eight finishes as JCHS scored 22 points to place 11th out of 28 scoring teams. North Central won the title with 79, followed by Cathedral (64) and Bishop Chatard (61.75).
“I couldn’t be prouder of the girls,” said Jay County coach Joe Imel, whose team posted the program’s best regional finish since placing ninth in 2011. “This is the time where you run the best that you can and run the best times that you’ve ran all year, and they answered that.
“And two to state is absolutely amazing.”
Parazzi was the favorite entering the regional after recording a career-best leap of 5 feet, 6 inches, to win the sectional title last week at Delta. But after clearing the bar easily at each of the first two heights and then passing at 5 feet, 1 inch, she missed her first attempt at 5 feet, 2 inches, before making it over on her second try.
Again at 5 feet, 3 inches, the bar came tumbling down for the Patriot on try No. 1 while Victoria Hardnett of Muncie Central sailed over on her first attempt. Parazzi again came through on her second opportunity, but the previous miss put Hardnett in the driver’s seat to win the regional. (Misses are the tiebreaker in high jump.)
Needing to clear the bar at 5 feet, 4 inches, for a chance at the regional title, Parazzi again missed on her first attempt. But so did the other four remaining jumpers.
Just over three minutes later, she soared.
Parazzi slipped over the bar on her second try at 5 feet, 4 inches, clapped as she popped out of the pit and jogged an eighth of a lap clockwise around the outside of the track to hug her exchange student sister Stefanie Dietrich in celebration.
No one else was able to match her, making Parazzi the Patriots’ first regional champion since Maria Murphy in discus in 2011.
“You have three attempts, and if you fail the first one, it doesn’t matter, you have other attempts,” said Parazzi, an exchange student from Italy, who will return to Ben Davis June 5 to compete in the IHSAA Girls Track and Field State Finals. “That’s what helped me because I failed all first attempts I had. But I was sure I wanted to do it. I wanted to win. And I won.”
Shannon was the No. 3 seed for the 400-meter dash Tuesday — the top three athletes in each event earn a state berth — but her odds of advancing quickly diminished.
The JCHS senior didn’t get out of the blocks as quickly as she would have liked. At the mid-point of the race, she was near the back of the field. As the runners made the turn for the home stretch, it appeared her career in her best event was over.
Then, suddenly, with 10 meters left, she was in it.
A week after rallying the Patriots’ 4x400 relay team for a regional berth, Shannon fought for a personal comeback. She surged through the final steps, edging ahead of Heritage Christian’s Carsyn Burdine at the finish line to claim third place by just 12 hundredths of a second.
“I really didn’t think I had to because those two girls were kicking it in,” said an out-of-breath Shannon to her teammates after the race.
She trailed only defending state champion Ramiah Elliott (55.72) of North Central and Kacyra Simmons (58.93) of the host Giants with her career-best time of 59.47.
“I just kept going,” added Shannon. “I was dead on the last stretch but I was like, ‘Just finish.’ … And, I don’t know. I just did it. It was a killer. …
“It’s a shock, finally, as a senior going to state. It’s amazing. I did not think I was ever going to get past regional.”
As shocked as Shannon was, it’s difficult to imagine anyone having had a more surprising seven days than Benter.
The Patriot senior placed fourth in the 100-meter high hurdles at the Delta sectional. Only the top three are guaranteed to move on to the regional meet.
But her time proved good enough to earn her a spot filling out the regional field. It was so good, she entered the meet seeded ninth of 16 runners.
Then she ran the seventh-fastest time — her career-best mark of 16.24 — in the preliminaries to earn a spot in the finals. She couldn’t quite match that time in the last race of her career, but still climbed two more spots for a fifth-place regional finish. (She was just one hundredth of a second behind fourth-place finisher Ella Garvin of New Castle in 16.35 while each of the top three broke the 16-second mark.)
“I was just surprised,” said Benter, who was also 12th in the 300 hurdles in 49.91. “I was lucky if I could get ninth. That’s how I felt.”
Bilbrey also climbed the ladder in the closing weeks of her sophomore season.
After knocking on the door to triple digits for most of the year, she finally broke through last week with her runner-up sectional toss of 100 feet, 3.5 inches. That distance made her the No. 11 seed, just on the outside of the top nine required to make finals.
Like her teammates, she delivered when the pressure was on. Bilbrey qualified for the finals and improved her career-best distance with a throw of 102 feet, 1 inch, to place seventh.
“Gabi has been all year between 95 and 98 feet in the discus,” said Imel. “I knew — we all knew — that she could throw 100 or over 100. She’s just a really hard worker.”
Kylie Klopfenstein, the only other individual Patriot competing Tuesday, had a toss of 35 feet, 0.5 inches, for 11th in the shot put.
Sophia Fugiett, Lindy Wood, Molly Muhlenkamp and Willow Hardy posted a time of 11 minutes, 0.56 seconds, for 13th in the 4x800 relay. Shea Bailey, Makinsey Murphy, Shannon and Benter were 14th in the 4x400 relay in 4 minutes, 24.75 seconds.
Top Stories
9/11 NEVER FORGET Mobile Exhibit
Chartwells marketing
September 17, 2024 7:36 a.m.
Events
250 X 250 AD