Fortkamp secures sixth in 50-yard freestyle

BOWLING GREEN, Ohio — The Indians will have to wait to find out if any of them will make the trip to Canton.

Teigen Fortkamp claimed the highest finish of the Fort Recovery High School swimmers at the OHSAA Division II Northwest district swim meet on Friday at Bowling Green State University, but fell just over five tenths of a second short of being an automatic qualifier for the state championship.

The top three finishers in each event at every district automatically make the state finals, while the other 20 spots are filled by the best times among all six district meets.

Fortkamp’s time of 25.13 seconds in the 50-yard freestyle earned the sixth spot at the meet. The FRHS senior finished only 0.54 seconds behind Alayna Biehl of Castalia Margaretta, who captured the final automatic berth to state.

Fortkamp also placed 10th in the backstroke – three spots behind her seed – with a time of 1 minute, 1.35 seconds.

Joelle Kaup, captured a pair of top-15 finishes for the Indians as well. She finished the 50 freestyle in 26.26 seconds to earn 14th place, which outperformed her seed line by 10 spots. She also excelled in the 100 butterfly, placing 15th with a time of 1:08.02.

As the lone boy to compete in the district meet, Sage Wendel took 13th in the 100 butterfly, cutting his time to under a minute at 57.41 seconds. He also had a 1:00.19 swim in the 100 backstroke.

The only other top-15 finish came from the 200 medley relay made of Fortkamp, Kaup, Paige Guggenbiller and Allison Knapke with a time of 2:00.26.

Guggenbiller was the only other individual to compete in an event. The Fort Recovery senior secured 23rd in the 100 breaststroke by finishing in 1:16.92.

The 400 freestyle relay of Kaup, Guggenbiller, Autumn Leuthold and Nevaeh Lennartz combined to place 21st in 1:54.58.

Tribe gets MAC win

NEW KNOXVILLE, Ohio — The Indians are no longer winless in conference play.

The Fort Recovery High School boys basketball team picked up its first Midwest Athletic Conference win as they beat the New Knoxville Ranger 39-34 Friday night.

Reece Guggenbiller led the way for Fort Recovery (7-13, 1-7 MAC) with 12 points. Half of his scoring came in the fourth quarter, as the Indians put up 11 points, as New Knoxville (4-16, 0-8 MAC) could only manage five.

Both teams entered the fourth quarter at 27 points before Fort Recovery put the Rangers away.

The Indians had eight players score, but only three hit more than one bucket. Troy Homan had eight points and Briggs Overman had seven.

This is only the third time this season that FRHS has been able to string together two wins in a row, and the first time since Overman’s buzzer beater at South Adams Dec. 22. They will travel to Tri-Village today before the regular season finale at New Bremen Feb. 23.