Just keep running

VERSAILLES, Ohio — Cross country can be a grueling sport.

Having fresh legs and mental strength can often make or break your performance.

Maddie Heitkamp’s legs weren’t the freshest, but her mental strength carried her to a career best.

Heitkamp pushed through to set a new career-best time of 22 minutes, 55.11 seconds, for 38th-place and was the fifth scorer for the Fort Recovery High School girls cross country team as it placed third at the Versailles Tour de Sewer at Versailles Water Treatment Plant on Saturday morning.

The Tribe girls scored 82 points to finish third out of 10 teams. The Division III No. 10 Botkins Trojans took first place with 35 points. Botkins’ Brittany Arnold won the race in 19:07.18.

Jay County’s cross country teams also competed in the race. The girls were without Paityn Wendel and exchange student Tinatin Japaridize, leaving them without the five athletes necessary to qualify for a team score.

The FRHS boys team finished with 205 points to earn eighth-place out of 13 teams. Jay County had 274 points to land it in 12th. Versailles won with 51 points.

Winning the boys race was Fort Recovery’s Trevor Heitkamp. He established an early lead and never looked back. By the half-mile mark there was a considerable gap between him and second place. His time was 16:03.89. 

“I thought all of our kids ran awesome girls and boys,” FRHS coach Christy Diller said. “Times were pretty comparable to last week, which was a much flatter and faster course. So, for them to run those kinds of times on this course, is a really good sign.”

The girls received strong performances from Natalie Brunswick and Ellie Will who stayed within the top 10 throughout the race. Brunswick set the pace, finishing third with a time of 19:59.38. Will earned eighth place and crossed the finish line at 21:06.36.

Joelle Kaup wasn’t far behind, finishing 14th (21:36.1) for a third score in the top 15 for the Indians.

The No. 4 finish came from Anna Roessner. She stuck with Kaup in the top 15 before waning after the mile mark and eventually finishing 31st with a time of 22:42.20.

The No. 5 score opened up for the Indians without freshman Makenna Huelskamp competing. When lining up, Heitkamp recognized that her body wasn’t at 100%.

“I could feel like my legs were already a little heavy whenever, like we were getting ready to line up,” Heitkamp said. “As soon as we took off, (the soreness) was already there.”

Off the start, she kept pace with Kaup for the first 400 yards. By the time she hit the mile mark, she was sitting around 35th and held the position for the rest of the race.

With about 200 yards left she held the position, but a strong push from some of her competitors resulted in her finishing 38th, for the best race of her high school career.

“I really wanted to PR,” Maddie Hietkamp said. “I was just trying to keep my head straight. As long as my mentality was good, I had a good feeling about how I would do even if I wasn’t physically there for it.”

The Patriots had different goals for the race.

JCHS coach Bruce Wood picked up the event because his athletes wouldn’t be familiar with their competition, so they could focus on race strategy rather than comparing how they were performing.

“We are trying to run negative splits,” Wood said. “We're trying to have a better strategy. For most of our guys, that is to not take off too fast, and to be able to feel good at the end, so they can be aggressive and finish.”

JCHS freshman Caleb Garringer runs in the middle of the pack during the Versailles Tour de Sewer at Versailles Water Treatment Plant on Saturday morning. Garringer finished with the No. score for the Patriots, clocking in at 18:32.75 to earn 40th place in the race. (The Commercial Review/Andrew Balko)

 

Two boys that did well with the strategy were Joseph Boggs and Max Klopfenstein. Boggs started the race in the middle of the pack and was in 40th after the first mile. By mile two, he worked his way into the low 30s before he was able to make a late push for 17th-place.

Boggs ran negative splits despite being on a difficult course for the first time.

“The most difficult part was each big turn was always a hairpin … so, you had to really tighten it in,” Boggs said. “There wasn't really any really steep uphills, but there was a really deep downhill, that would tear apart your legs if you go down it wrong.”

Klopfenstein was near the 100th-place runner after the first mile and consistently worked his way up to a 69th-place finish with a time of 19:21.29.

Other scores for the boys came from Caleb Garringer (18:32.75) in 40th, Lukes Powers (21:55.84) in 129th and Darren Fisher (22:27.45) in 137th.

On the girls’ side, Wood was impressed with Willow Hardy’s execution during the race. She crossed the finish line at 24:24.66 for 64th.

Alexis Sibray paced the Patriot girls for a 24th-place finish in 22:19.6. Courtney Harris (86th – 26:27.68) and Nina Ribas Cesar (114th – 32:50.64) were the other Patriots competing.

“It was a successful race,” Wood said. “The course is probably the toughest we’ve ran all year, so our results, I’m super happy with.”

Parker Brunswick (27th), Reese Diller (36th), Evan Evers (96th) and Russell Hart (114th) made up the rest of the  boy’s scoring for Fort Recovery’s eighth-place finish.

“I think it’s good. The high school boys is hard because we’ve got a big gap there,” Diller said. 

“As we get a little further and try to tighten that gap up, they’ve been running really well.”

Junior high

The Fort Recovery middle school teams also competed, with the girls finishing sixth and the boys ninth.

Riley Heitkamp paced the girls with a 17th-place finish in 13:59.92 en route to 143 points. Versailles won with 37 points.

Courtney Klenke (23) and Kendall Ranly (29) both had top-30 finishes. The other scores came from Claire Grube (58th) and Yoselin Juarez-Gomez (60th).

Alex Roessner finished first for the boys after 12:27.57 for 16th place as the team scored 202 points. Russia won the meet with 34.

The other Indians finished close to each other with Charlie Stammen in 66th, Gavin Heitkamp in 69th, Evan Diller in 71st and Chase Filey in  79th.