Patriots place third (10/06/03)

PORTLAND — It was a much different — and more talented — field at this year’s Jay County Invitational. The Patriot girls more than held their own.

Jay County finished third in the girls competition with a score of 104. They trailed only seventh-ranked DeKalb (28) and previously state-ranked Bloomington South (104).

The Patriot boys team was 15th out of the 15-team field. Blackford won the boys meet with a score of 65, and Bloomington South was second with 75.

“It was an awesome job,” said Jay County coach Trent Paxson of his girls team. “I told the girls I wanted to place in the top five. When they read our name at No. 3 we were pretty ecstatic.

“Last year we won the invitational, but this year we placed third and the teams we were running against were outstanding teams. It was just as exciting as last year. All the girls that ran had really good times.”

And leading the pack of strong runners as usual was sophomore Alyssa Johnson. She ran a solid race, standing in second at the one-mile mark before sliding to third behind Leslee Getts of DeKalb and Erin Kingsbury of Fort Wayne Northrop.

Johnson finished in 15:37, three seconds ahead of DeKalb’s Jaime Bosuell.

Nicole VanSkyock was next for the Patriots, rallying out of a pack of runners to finish 11th overall in 16:16.

“Alyssa had a strong race yesterday,” said Paxson. “It was a good race for her. That level of competition at this point in the season is really good for her.”

“Nikki starts knocking them off over the course of the race. She ran an extremely good race.”

Jay County’s dynamic pair of freshman were next, bolstering the top two runners as they have all year. Allison Fullenkamp rolled in at 22nd in 16:36, and Jessica Mosier was 31st in 17:14.

Jill Roughia rounded out the pack for the Patriots with an excellent finish. She ran shoulder to shoulder with Bloomington South’s Sharon Davis and just held her off at the end to take 42nd in 17:40.

Vanessa Wilkins placed 63rd in 18:46, and Lindsey Vesperry was one second back in 64th.

“The two freshman have really stepped up,” said Paxson. “They have filled two spots of two seniors from last year and have been able to close the gap to our first- and second-place runners. They’ve really been a tremendous plus to the team this year.

“(Jill) is just a tremendous runner in that position. She’s knocked off almost a minute from her time last year. That’s just a tremendous effort on her part to be running as strong as she is.”

The top finish for the Jay County boys came from Josh Atkinson, who finally broke the 20-minute barrier. He was 75th in the race with a time of 19:52.

Freshman Josh Selvey was 81st in 20:03, and Nathan McClung placed 84th with a time of 20:12. Paul Imel took 88th in 20:19, with Josh Hawn 91st in 20:50.

Doug Murray finished 95th, and Ian Shannon was 98th.

“The boys are rebuilding,” said Paxson. “We lost our top three runners that we had from last year. It’s a good group of boys, we’re just struggling a little bit this year.”

“It’s almost like they’ve had a mental block here for the longest time that we can’t break into the 19s and we’re not good enough to get to the 18s. Now we finally had someone break that barrier. Hopefully now they know they can get better times and will believe in themselves to do that.”

The Patriots will run in the Olympic Athletic Conference meet Thursday at Mounds State Park in Anderson.[[In-content Ad]]