Indians secure six state berths at Troy

TROY, Ohio — The Indians were set up to get a haul of athletes to Dayton.

Despite underperforming based on seeding nearly across the board, they found a way to get them through.

The Fort Recovery High School track team secured six automatic qualifications to the state tournament on Friday at the OHSAA Division III regional meet at Troy. Two more athletes are set to receive call backs as well.

The girls team climbed up to fourth in the regional meet with 36 points. Minster, another Midwest Athletic Conference school and champion of the Spencerville district meet, finished above the Indians in third as it collected 51.5 points. Fort Loramie ran away with the regional title as its 86.5 points trumped West Liberty-Salem’s 62.

The sole boy for Fort Recovery, Trevor Heitkamp, collected 11 points to put the Indians in 17th. Marion Local claimed the top spot with 85.

The top four finishes at each regional earn an automatic spot at the state tournament on May 30 and 31, which has been moved from its normal location at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium at Ohio State University due to renovations to University of Dayton’s Welcome Stadium. The two best times that didn’t automatically qualify for state will also be called back to compete.

The Indians had six automatic qualifiers from the regional meet.

Three-time state long jumper Mara Pearson secured her fourth trip with a mark of 17 feet, 7 ½ inches. After being the top seed, she fell to fourth place, just making it in over Tri-Village’s Addison Hines who came up 1 ½ inches short Pearson.

Anna Roessner and the 4x100-meter relay teams were also top seeds that didn’t win their events but made it through.

The 4x100 team composed of Roessner, Paige Guggenbiller, Kiana Matsuda and Pearson took second place with a time of 49.19 seconds. West Liberty-Salem’s team captured the regional title with a time of 48.67 seconds.

Rossner held the top seed in the 200 dash, but wound up third in the finals. Her time of 25.12 seconds got her through to state for the first time as an individual. She also punched her ticket in the 100 dash with a 12.24 which was good for third place. 

Heitkamp also will make the trip in a pair of events. 

He finished one seed lower in both the 1,600 and 3,200 runs. A time of 9 minutes, 38.79 seconds was good for fourth place and gave him 1.69 seconds of padding in front of Bennett Lehman of Ansonia. His 4:22.587 in the 1,600 run earned third place, but only netted Heitkamp 0.43 seconds of wiggle room before Tony Moorman of Versailles crossed the finish line for fifth place.

Natalie Brunswick and Matsuda didn’t get automatic berths, but hold the best times in Division III between the girls who didn’t finish in the top four at the other three regionals.

Matsuda’s 46.82 seconds finish in the 300 hurdles was 0.31 seconds slower than Jefferson’s Lyv Lindeman in fourth place at Troy, but beat out the fifth-place finishers at Norwayne (Ava Vecchione, 46.83), Fostonia (Aubrey Burkholder) andHeath (Madison Smith 48.58).

Legacy Christian’s Carolina Hamilton crossed the finish line 2.1 seconds before Brunswick for fourth place in the 1,600 run. Yet, Bruswick’s time of 5:10.75 bested the fifth-place finisher from the other regionals by at least 2.75 seconds.

Other scoring performances came from Karlie Niekamp in the discus and the 4x400 relay team. Niekamp finished eighth with a 107 foot-long toss. She was 13 feet, 4 inches short of Botkins’ Jana Metz for the final spot at state.

Matsuda, Ellie Will, Guggenbiller and Pearson combined in the 4x400 relay, which was the only event the Indians improved their result from their seed line. They finished seventh with a time of 4:06.84 after originally being seeded eighth.

Brunswick fell to 11th in the 3,200 run with a 12:09.61.