Come & Get Me!

The girls team qualified to the regional meet for the third straight year by placing 3rd in their race, beating Carroll by 1 point and losing to Alter and Northwestern. Katie Landwehr ran the best race of her career and broke the 19 minute barrier for the first time, finishing 1st overall with a time of 18:54, 14 seconds ahead of Alter’s Catherine Crisler. Katie led for almost the entire race with Crisler and Indian Lake’s Rachel Watt less than 10 meters behind. With less than a half mile to go in the race, Katie dared her competitors to run with her. She turned around, looked directly into Crisler’s eyes and confidently said, “Alter, come and get me”. Katie picked up the pace, but her competitors were unable to step up to the challenge.

The rest of the girls ran similar times from the CBC race last weekend. Peyton Miller finished in 20th with a time of 20:52. Jessica Bruggerman, Corrie Jones, and Allison Chin ran in a pack to round out their top five and finished 26th, 27th, and 28th with times of 21:11, 21:12 and 21:14. Tracy Fujimura finished 41st with a time of 22:10, and Flora Hernandez finished 45th with a time of 22:22. 76 runners competed in the race.

The girls team is looking to improve on their 5th place regional finish from last year and finish in the top 4 to qualify to the state meet, but they will definitely have to drop some time if they want to do that. Tipp enters the regional meet with the 5th best top 5 average time in the 16 team field. Individually, Katie Landwehr should dual it out with rival Angela Klimklowski from West Milton for the regional title. Katie didn’t even finish in the top 16 last year to qualify to state individually, but has improved dramatically since then. The girls team is an underdog to qualify to the state meet, but they have a lot of fight in them and will leave it all out on the course on Saturday at Troy.