Comeback spark

The baton was just handed to the fourth participant of the 4x800-meter relay.

Heritage had a commanding lead with a gap of almost 100 meters.

The deficit didn’t phase Jay County freshman Alexis Sibray. She started making up ground on her first lap to be within striking distance on the final stretch. With only 100 meters until the finish line, Sibray was able to pass Heritage’s runner and secure a narrow victory.

“I guess I’m just really competitive,” Sibray said. “With all the girls pushing me to do better, I think I just dug deeper. I was like ‘I can beat her. I’ve got this.’”

Jay County won the race with a time of 11 minutes, 9.5 seconds — just 0.81 seconds faster than Heritage.

The win was the first of many as the Jay County High School track girls track team won all but three events for an 86-73 victory.

The Patriot boys performed well in the relays, distance and hurdles, but Heritage’s dominance in the sprints and field events were too much to handle as they lost 65-57.

Along with helping Jay County win the 4x800 relay, Sibray earned another pair of first-place finishes. She won the 800 run and set a career best at two minutes, 36.41 seconds, and the 1,600 run with a time of 6:16.01.

“She’s done really, really well,” coach Joe Imel said. “I’m really proud of her and pleased with her. She’s a freshman, so hopefully we can continue to get production from her for three more years.”

Two more girls — Morgan DeHoff and Natalie Wehrly — added double wins and set new career bests while doing it.

DeHoff won both the hurdles events for the girls. She set her career best in the 100 hurdles at 16.87 and ran a 52.5 in the 300 hurdles.

“I’ve been feeling really good about hurdles lately,” DeHoff said. “It is very good to think about how we have someone in each section of our track that we have someone there that can do good.”

The sprinter for the girls was Wehrly, who added wins in the 400 dash (1:02.97 – a career best) as well as the 100 dash (13).

Jenna Dues took care of the other sprint, the 200 dash, after getting a challenge from Imel to treat the race as a true sprint all the way through. She had a career best in the race with 28.

Imel challenged many of Jay County’s runners to step up in similar ways during the meet.

“‘Where do we want to be? Do we want to be champions in the ACAC?’” Imel said he asked his team. “Then we’ve got to start picking some stuff up. You can’t be comfortable. When we are running some of our races we have to push ourselves to be better.”

The boys also had two runners place first multiple times.

In Joseph Boggs’ first time competing in the 3,200 run he beat the field with a time of 11:45.97. He added another victory in the 1,600 (4:55.79).

Senior Isaac Kunkler swept the hurdles for Jay County. He was able to set a career best in the 300 hurdles (41.37) and get under 16 seconds in the 110 hurdles (15.89).

“It was a really smooth race, smoother than any of my other races this season,” Kunkler said. “Hopefully I can put more speed on that by the end of this season. Otherwise we’re doing good.”

Dylan Marentes recorded the only other individual win for JCHS as he finished first in the 800 run with a time of 2:18.50. Every other win for the boys came via team efforts in the 4x800 relay (8:55.31) and the 4x400 relay (3:42.33).

En route to the win, the girls also got first-place finishes from Paityn Wendel (3,200 run – 14:26), Molly Muhlenkamp (high jump – 4 feet, 10 inches), the 4x400 relay (4:37) and the 4x100 relay (53.55).