Tipp Cross Country DOMIN8s at Miami County Championships

Year after year Tippecanoe’s cross country program continues to grow in numbers and improve on their success from the year before. Just ten years before Tipp struggled to even field a varsity team. Now the high school girls’ team has 24 runners and the boys 14 with similar numbers in the junior high. Not only is Tipp now able to field a varsity team, but they are now able to proclaim themselves as Miami County’s top cross country program. Both the high school and junior high boys won their races on Saturday, September 27th; the high school girls placed second, and the junior high girls placed third out of the nine county teams. By adding up their four places Tipp scored only seven points, four fewer than Troy (11) and six fewer than Covington (13). A majority of the runners ran much faster than when they ran the course earlier in the year at the Bob Schul Invitaitonal.
The high school boys’ goal heading into their race was to score fewer points than their junior high counterparts, but came up just short, winning with 25 points and beating second place Troy by 65 points. Jason Salyer and Kevin fink, arguably the best 1-2 punch in the state of Ohio for D2, finished 1st and 2nd respectively with times of 16:33 and 16:36. Jason Bruns finished in 5th with a time of 16:48, 23 seconds faster than Schul. Tyler Fietshans finished in 6th with a time of 17:18. Luke Zerkle finished as the team’s fifth man for the second time this season, finishing 13th overall with a time of 17:39, a minute and 15 seconds faster than Schul. Matt Zuzolo finished 13th with a time of 17:48, 54 seconds faster than Schul, and Zach Wertz finished 21st with a time of 18:24, 32 seconds faster than Schul. 89 runners competed in the race.