Seymour Sets School Record at Tiffin Carnival
The SJA cross country team travelled to Tiffin over the weekend to compete in the Tiffin Carnival, the largest cross country meet in Ohio and in the words of Head Coach Fred Keiser “possibly the whole Midwest.” The team took home 19th place at the meet and a new school record for cross country, as well as a number of other improved race times.
Sophomore Sydney Seymour ran her second record-breaking race of the season, beating her last record time of 18:38 by three seconds. She placed fourth overall, following the race’s overall winner Carly Davis from Dublin Jerome High School by only twenty-one seconds.
The rest of varsity was not far behind with Maggie Wagner ‘17 finishing next in 16th place with a time of 19:15. Sophomore Caitlyn Walsh followed her in with a new PR (21:04) that cut forty seconds off her previous best time. Emily Conway ‘18 (21:17), Maxine McGuire ‘17 (21:41), Claudia Becker ‘18 (21:46), and Alana Vovk ‘17 (22:56) finished out the varsity line-up strong, each putting up a good race against the 245 “very competitive” runners that took part in the Tiffin Carnival.
However, the varsity weren’t the only runners performing well on the team. Senior Monica Hahn, running in the Division I B race, was able to earn a varsity letter in her second race ever with a time of 21:56. In the open race, Grace Grove ‘18 and Grace Kanary ‘17 stood out to Coach Kieser.
“They both ran exceptionally in the open race. They ran ahead of people they are normally behind,” said Kieser.
While many of these girls were nominated for “Runner of the Meet” award, Zoe Miczak ‘17 won the weekly recognition, garnering the most votes from her fellow runners out of anyone on the team.
When asked about his thoughts on the season’s prospects, Coach Kieser spoke with determination about the challenges the season would hold for his team. “We have a few injuries to very key people, so this is forcing us to challenge our younger runners to step up and try to fill the void. Right now we are very good in the front with Sydney Seymour and Maggie Wagner, but there is too much of a gap between them and our 3rd, 4th, and 5th runners. We have the talent to cut that margin down; it’s just a matter of the athletes believing they can do so. By the end of the season we expect to have the injured runners back, so if that can happen and some younger runners pull through we will be okay,” said Kieser.
