Wallace takes the first point; the IVC title is decided by one
Kali Wallace gave Claymont the best possible start to the Inter-Valley Conference girls championship Saturday. Tuscarawas Valley’s pack gave the Trojans just enough to finish first as a team.
Wallace won the October 17 race at Sandy Valley in 19:05.02, beating Indian Valley’s Bridget Pittis by 53.21 seconds. The team result was much tighter: Tuscarawas Valley scored 47, Claymont 48 and Indian Valley 49. A single finishing place separated each of the first three teams.
Tuscarawas Valley took third, fourth, fifth and sixth behind Natalie Rennicker, Natalie Stokes, Brooklynn Sponaugle and Hayden Huffman. The four finished within 10.32 seconds, giving the Trojans an early advantage in the scoring. Claymont countered with Wallace’s win and seventh and eighth from freshmen Corabell Morris and Riley Roach.
Emma McPherson gave the Mustangs a fourth finisher in eleventh. Heidi Johnson followed in twenty-second overall, earning 21 scoring points because a runner ahead of her belonged to an incomplete team. Claymont’s first five totaled 48, a reminder of how an individual placing and a team point can differ in a close race.
Indian Valley nearly beat both approaches. Pittis ran a season-best 19:58.23, Rowan Harshey finished ninth and Bailey Herbert tenth. Jillian Welch was thirteenth and Blaire Harshey fifteenth, putting all five Braves inside the first fifteen. Their 49 points left them two short of the title.
Pittis, Herbert and Welch ran season bests, as did Claymont’s Roach and McPherson. Roach’s 20:44.38 and Herbert’s 20:47.42 now sit seventh and eighth on the area girls season-best list. Wallace retains her faster 18:20.33 from Medina, while Morris keeps her 20:20 from Cambridge.
Both Claymont and Indian Valley enter the Division III district race at Cambridge on October 24. Tuscarawas Valley is in that field as well. This week’s championship supplies a direct meeting between three teams expected near the front, even though the district field will bring more teams into the scoring.
Garaway’s Lydia Raber, Newcomerstown’s Solee Garland and Buckeye Trail’s Kloie Eagon finished nineteenth, twenty-first and twenty-third. Their 22:18.33, 22:24.94 and 22:30.22 marks sharpen the Division IV individual contest. Eagon was only 5.28 seconds behind Garland in the same race, giving that district comparison more substance than separate season times alone.
Full IVC girls results · Original team scores · District preview