{"id":198914,"date":"2025-10-28T20:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-29T01:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/?p=198914"},"modified":"2025-10-28T20:28:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-29T01:28:15","slug":"young-runners-lead-vw-to-state-meet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/2025\/10\/28\/young-runners-lead-vw-to-state-meet\/","title":{"rendered":"Young runners lead VW to state meet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>SCOTT TRUXELL\/<\/strong><em>independent sports<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TIFFIN &#8212; It\u2019s not something you see often \u2013 a young group of runners headed to the OHSAA cross country state championships, but Van Wert is bucking that trend.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Just how young are the Cougars? Symphony Schuerman, who led Van Wert to a fifth place finish at Saturday\u2019s Division III Tiffin regional is a sophomore who qualified for state as a freshman. She ran the course in 19:01 on Saturday, the fourth fastest girls\u2019 time in school history and received a medal for finishing eighth overall. She was followed by junior Noelle Byrum (26th, 20:14), and then three freshmen \u2013 Ruby Dicke (31st, 20:25), Jasleen Sharma (39th, 20:44), and Faith Stoller (65th, 21:39). Their efforts led the Cougars, ranked No. 15 in the final OATCC Coaches Poll, as a team to the state championship meet for the first time in 12 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Head coach Bob Spath and assistant coach Natoshia Wilhelm said they\u2019re proud of all team members this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cThe grit and determination we&#8217;ve seen from each athlete has been the reason behind such a successful season, the duo stated.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"550\" height=\"434\" src=\"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/VW-girls-CC-team-state-bound-2025.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-198916\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Van Wert&#8217;s girls cross country team was all smiles after qualifying for Division III state. <em>Photo submitted<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Huron won the team title with 46 points and Ottawa-Glandorf was the runner-up (126). Napoleon finished third (136), Archbold fourth (139) and Van Wert fifth (146) out of 20 teams. Port Clinton\u2019s Morgan Wiechman was the individual winner (18:07).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The girls\u2019 team will run at 11:50 a.m. Saturday at Fortress Obetz and Memorial Park near Columbus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>After a successful season with several personal records, Van Wert\u2019s boys\u2019 team saw the season come to an end with a sixth place finish at regionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Cougars were led by junior Harrison Sloan who ran a 17:01 and finished 21st overall. Johan Gemmer, a senior this year, ran an all-time personal record of 17:06 and finished 24th in his final race. Freshman Calvin Byrum finished 40th (17:31), followed by sophomore Alex Bauer (45th, 17:46) and junior Isaak Castillo (48th, 17:45)&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Liberty-Benton won the Division III boys\u2019 team title (58), easily by outdistancing runner-up Bryan (90). Ottawa Hills finished third (148) out of 19 teams, Ontario fourth (159), Upper Sandusky fifth (169), followed by Van Wert (174).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The Cougars were ranked No. 17 in the final Division III OATCC Coaches Poll of the season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SCOTT TRUXELL\/independent sports TIFFIN &#8212; It\u2019s not something you see often \u2013 a young group of runners headed to the OHSAA cross country state championships, but Van Wert is bucking that trend. Just how young are the Cougars? Symphony Schuerman, who led Van Wert to a fifth place finish at Saturday\u2019s Division III Tiffin regional [&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-198914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-22 22:17:10","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\/198914","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=198914"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":198932,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/198914\/revisions\/198932"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=198914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=198914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thevwindependent.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=198914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}