May leads the way

UPLAND — The freshmen had already transformed the Patriots.

A team that had struggled to put enough runners on the course to score over the previous three seasons transformed into a weekly contender and a conference champion.

For most of the season, Ava May was the No. 4 or 5 runner for the squad. Twice in the final three meets, including the Allen County Athletic Conference Championships, she jumped up to the No. 2 spot.

In the biggest meet of the season, she took over.

May broke away from teammates Abby Fifer and Jessie Homan in the final mile Saturday, finishing 10th overall with her fellow freshmen not far behind to lead the Jay County High School girls to a runner-up finish in the IHSAA cross country Sectional 9 race hosted by Delta at Taylor University.

“Honestly, I was so happy,” said Alexis Sibray, one of the veterans on the squad as a junior. “It’s amazing.”

“It’s pretty cool because we didn’t know they would be this good and we didn’t know we would be pulling off all these wins we have been,” she added. (In addition to earning the ACAC title, the Patriots were also first at the Winchester Invitational and the Randolph Southern Invitational.) “And so watching us grow and compete to the place we have been is pretty awesome.”

The Patriot girls trailed champion Norwell by just 13 points while finishing 50 ahead of third- and fourth-place conference rivals Bluffton and Adams Central (both finished at 131 with Bluffton winning the sixth-runner tiebreaker). Wapahani scored 134 for the final regional-qualifying spot.

Over the previous four years, Jay County had never had more than five runners in its sectional lineup — a full squad is seven — and didn’t have enough to total a team score in 2022. The Patriots finished seventh out of nine teams in 2021 and 12th out of 13 a season ago.

“Awesome,” said JCHS coach Bruce Wood. “It’s been a struggle. … Four years ago, I went out during lunchtime to recruit just to see if I could get girls to join so I could put five girls on the line and get a team score.

“So here we are, we have five of the fastest runners in the sectional really. It feels really good.”

Jay County’s boys finished in eighth place — they were 18 points behind final regional qualifier Norwell — but advanced Caleb Garringer, Dash Thacker and Joseph Boggs to the next level. (The top five teams and top 15 runners on non-advancing teams earn a spot in the regional meet.) Bluffton won the sectional title with 66 points ahead of Wapahani (80), Bellmont (129) and South Adams (146).

“I was hoping to get the boys through too,” said Wood. “They had a shot. We did have some illness hit us at the beginning of the week. … I’m sure that impacted that race a little bit.”

The JCHS girls team and the trio of boys will compete in the regional meet at 10:30 a.m. Saturday hosted by New Haven at Huntington University.

In the sectional race, Jay County’s group of top runners was stacked between the No. 15 and 25 spots at the mile mark with Abby Fifer leading the group. When they reached 2 miles, Fifer, Jessie Homan and May were separated by just a few strides in 11th, 12th and 13th, respectively.

By the home stretch, May had not only pulled ahead of and away from her teammates but had also overtaken South Adams No. 1 runner Adalynn Watson. She stayed strong down the stretch, clinching 10th place by nine seconds over Watson in a career-best time of 20 minutes, 42.6 seconds.

May, whose time was more than a minute faster than in the ACAC meet a week earlier, said she felt good sprinting at the end of the race.

“I never sprint,” said May, who was the No. 4 or 5 runner for the Patriots in each of their first six races this season. “Sometimes it’s just hard, like you don’t have enough mental to do it. But today, I was like, ‘This might be the last race of the season,’ so I’ve got to do good.”

Homan and Fifer finished back-to-back in 13th and 14th with nearly identical times of 20:59.4 and 21 minutes flat, respectively. Sibray crossed in 21:07.3 for 16th place and another freshman, Brooklyn Byrum, completed the team score with her time of 22:04.5 for 29th.

“All the runners did what we asked them to do, so it’s hard to really point at any individual … and say they did great because they all did,” said Wood. “That’s what makes a great sectional team.”

While the top Patriot girls started a bit further back and moved their way forward, Jay County’s leading boys established their positions quickly. Garringer and Thacker were in fifth and sixth places in at the mile mark, trailing only a pair of runners from Bluffton, Wapahani’s Caleb Aber and Norwell’s Gavin Threewits. They continued to hold those spots at the 2-mile mark.

While Adams Central’s Trevor Schwartz made a massive move in the final mile to claim the individual championship, Garringer and Thacker otherwise held strong. The former led the Patriot boys in sixth place in 16:39.6 with the latter just over six seconds behind him in seventh.

“The first mile, I was with Dash — Dash and me were running together,” said Garringer. “It’s nice to have someone to pace me, help me get up there, push me.”

Boggs picked up the 15th and final individual regional-qualifying spot, edging Delta’s Noah Parrott at the finish line for 34th place. (They recorded identical times of 18:09.3.)

Rounding out the team score for the Patriot boys were Max Klopfenstein in 60th at 19:19 and Dougie Cox in 62nd at 19:21.2.

Also running for JCHS but not factoring into the team totals were Paityn Wendel (45th – 23:09) and Lizzy Brunswick (61st – 24:38) for the girls and Beckett Brandenburg (72nd – 20:07) and Cooper Glentzer (81st – 20:54) for the boys.