{"id":121486,"date":"2019-08-18T21:21:25","date_gmt":"2019-08-19T02:21:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=121486"},"modified":"2019-08-18T21:22:00","modified_gmt":"2019-08-19T02:22:00","slug":"vw-cougars-run-at-ohsaa-invite","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2019\/08\/18\/vw-cougars-run-at-ohsaa-invite\/","title":{"rendered":"VW Cougars run at OHSAA Invite"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>VW independent sports\/submitted information<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>HEBRON &#8212; The Van Wert High School boys and girls cross country teams competed in the first invitational of their respective seasons at the OHSAA Early Season Invitational, held Saturday at National Trail Raceway in Hebron, site of state cross country championship races. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This year\u2019s featured many of the top teams from around Ohio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"350\" height=\"350\" src=\"https:\/\/www.thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/VW-CC-8-19-19.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-121485\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/VW-CC-8-19-19.jpg 350w, https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/08\/VW-CC-8-19-19-150x150.jpg 150w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><figcaption><strong>Van Wert&#8217;s Hunter Sherer, Caylee Phillips, Jayden Welker and Kyra Welch.<\/strong> <em>photos submitted <\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>On the boys side, the Cougars finished a respectable 10th in a highly competitive field of 17 teams.  Sophomore Hunter Sherer led Van Wert with a 12th place finish, covering the 3.1 mile course in 17:37.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Fellow sophomore Gage Wannemacher followed Sherer, placing 29th with a time of 18:37.  Freshman Jayden Welker ran his first high school race and placed 41st in a time of 19:13, and he received the team\u2019s \u201cCougar Pride Award\u201d for his hard work and effort.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Sophomore Jacob Sealscott (107th, 21:24), and sophomore Bobby Spath (120th, 22:31) rounded out the scoring for Van Wert.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, the Lady Cougars finished seventh out of 14 teams, led by senior Caylee Phillips\u2019 seventh place finish. Competing against some of the best Division II runners in Ohio, Phillips crossed the finish line with a time of 20:20.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>Junior Rachel Spath was Van Wert\u2019s second finisher, placing 39th with a time of 23:44.  The freshman duo of Kyra Welch and Tyra McClain were the 3rd and 4th finishers, respectively, for Van Wert. Welch placed 43rd in 23:54 while McClain finished in 52nd place with a time of 24:35. Welch was the recipient of the team\u2019s Cougar Pride Award on the girls\u2019 side because of her strong performance . Senior Ali Gemmer (57th, 24:47) rounded out scoring for the Lady Cougars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cToday was an opportunity to get our first race under our belts and see where we are at,\u201d Van Wert head coach Ryan Holliday said.  \u201cWe\u2019ve put a lot of work in over the summer and recent weeks and it was great to finally get out there and race.\u201d<br>\n\u201cThe state course is tough, and Saturday\u2019s weather was quite warm, but definitely we had some solid performances to build on, Holliday added. \u201cWe learned a lot about ourselves today and plan on using these races to get better.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The teams will compete again Saturday at the Delphos St. John\u2019s Blue Jay Invitational.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>VW independent sports\/submitted information HEBRON &#8212; The Van Wert High School boys and girls cross country teams competed in the first invitational of their respective seasons at the OHSAA Early Season Invitational, held Saturday at National Trail Raceway in Hebron, site of state cross country championship races. This year\u2019s featured many of the top teams [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-121486","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-01 12:56:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=121486"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/121486\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=121486"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=121486"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=121486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}