Relay advances, 10 reach finals

SPENCERVILLE, Ohio — The Indian girls 4x800-meter relay team will compete at the regional.

The team of Ellie Will, Kennedy Muhlenkamp, Megan Diller and Natalie Brunswick finished third in the 4x800 relay Wednesday for the Fort Recovery High School girls track team at the opening day of the OHSAA Division III sectional meet at Spencerville.

The Tribe also had 10 qualifiers, including 400 dash No. 1 seed Anna Roessner, who will compete in the finals tonight. (The top four finishers in each event advance to next week’s regional meet at Troy.) The third-place relay effort gave the FRHS girls six points, placing them seventh out of 10 scoring teams heading into tonight’s action. Minster leads with 26.

The boys team got two points from Connor Kaikala and currently sits last out of 11 scoring teams. Marion Local is atop the standings with 48 points.

Brunswick, Will, Diller and Muhlenkamp easily earned their regional berth as they finished in 10 minutes, 3.65 seconds. They were more than 20 seconds faster than fourth-place St. Henry as they trailed only Minster (9:36.57) and New Bremen (9:57.62).

The other two girls relays (4x100 and 4x400) both finished in fourth in Wednesday’s preliminaries.

Anna Roessner earned the No. 1 seed in the 400 dash (1:02.17), finishing 0.12 seconds faster than No. 2 seed Sannah Chede of New Knoxville. She also qualified fifth for the 200 dash.

Kiana Matsuda earned the No. 3 seed in the 300 hurdles, with Mara Pearson earning the fifth spot in the 100 dash. Muhlenkamp qualified seventh for the 400 dash, with Megan Diller (10th) and Joelle Kaup (14th) making the finals of the 800 run.

Connor Kaikala had the top effort for the boys team, placing seventh in the long jump. The only Indian boy to qualify for tonight’s finals was Parker Brunswick, who finished in the 13th position in the 800 run.