Laux signs with Butler

She’s helped a relay team win back-to-back sectional championships.
She’s had her part in a pair of team sectional titles in two sports.
Next year, she’ll have the opportunity to help the Bulldogs chase a Big East conference title.
Emma Laux, a Jay County High School senior, signed a national letter of intent Wednesday to run track for Butler University.
“I feel like I have everything figured out and everything is falling into place,” said Laux, who on March 31 was awarded The Portland Foundation’s 2016 Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship. “It is nice.”
Running track for the Bulldogs wasn’t in her plans initially, but once she visited the campus on the north side of Indianapolis and met with coach Matt Roe and some of the members on the team, she was hooked.
“He was really nice and he had really high expectations for the girls and the team,” she said. “That really drew me in. Once I saw their facilities, got to go to one of their practices and meet with some of the athletes, I knew it was something I really wanted to do.”
As a freshman and sophomore, Laux, ran the first leg of the Patriots’ 4x100-meter relay that won consecutive sectional championships. During the same time, the Patriots had won their fourth and fifth straight sectional titles.
“She has improved every single year and I don’t think she’s reached how good she is going to be,” Brian McEvoy, Jay County’s girls track coach, said of the senior. “I think a program like that, the facilities they have and the competition they are going against, I think it is going to make her take the next step.
“I think we’re only seeing the foundation of what she can do and I think she is going to really excel there.”
Laux, who plans to study psychology, is a two-sport athlete for the Patriots. She played a crucial role roaming the midfield in helping lead the Jay County girls soccer team to back-to-back sectional titles — the only two in program history — during the 2013 and 2014 seasons. She scored three goals and totaled five assists as the Patriots won their first Allen County Athletic Conference championship in 2015.
The sprinter is Jay County’s indoor record holder in the 60-meter dash, a mark she set March 5 in 8.47 seconds, besting her time as a junior by eight hundredths of a second.
“Emma just went about everything right her entire four years here,” McEvoy said. “Not only athletically but academically. She was heavily involved in clubs and organizations. In the classroom she is an exceptional student. She has worked really hard for her success. Colleges really look for that thing and I’m sure that is one of the first things (Butler) checked out and looked into with her.
“She has really put in the legwork for that.”
Laux credits past teammates for helping instill her work ethic as a track athlete, alluding to Abigail Johnson and Abbi Dunlavy, both 2014 JCHS graduates who run at the next level. Johnson competes for Indiana Wesleyan, and Dunlavy runs for IPFW.
Laux’s younger sister Lucy, a sophomore, has emerged as a sprinter and has given her sibling more of a drive to become faster.
As a junior, Emma Laux finished second and third respectively in the 100 and 200 dashes during Jay County’s inaugural appearance in the ACAC championships. In the sectional meet four days later, she finished sixth in the 100 dash and fourth in the 200, finishing out of the top three and a regional berth by 0.14 seconds.
Her career-best times are 12.6 and 26.8 seconds respectively. She also competes in the 400 dash — she expects to do the same at Butler — and her best time in the event is 1 minute, 2 seconds.
Laux becomes the first Division I track athlete since Dunlavy, and McEvoy is not looking forward to having to replace her.
“You hope they leave a legacy on your program as a role model for the younger girls,” McEvoy said. “It is possible, that you can compete at that level and if you work hard good things are going to happen to you.
“I’m hoping the next Emma Laux is coming along.”