Center Grove senior is county's lone state qualifier

CARMEL

For the second straight postseason meet, Center Grove cross-country standout Tori Schoettmer was sidelined with a foot injury.

Consequently, the senior did not get a chance to qualify for a third IHSAA State Meet. She was a spectator at Saturday’s Carmel semistate competition.

But senior teammate Jordan Timmons did qualify as an individual for next Saturday’s state finals at Terre Haute with a 12th-place finish.

A close friend of Schoettmer, Timmons is the county’s only state finals representative.

The Trojans did not advance as a team. Neither did any teams or individuals on the boys side.

“Tori’s like my best friend,” Timmons said. “I love her being here with me, and I just knew I could do it. I trained so hard for this. I stayed calm and relaxed.”

Tenth-ranked Center Grove narrowly missed advancing as a team. The Trojans and No. 12 Westfield were tied for sixth place with scores of 186. Tiebreaker worked in favor of Westfield, which advanced by virtue of the sixth runner’s time.

Only the top six teams advance to the state meet.

“We were running without our best runner (Schoettmer), so we knew it was going to be an uphill climb,” Trojans coach Wes Dodson said. “We were just trying to see if we could pull it off, and we almost did.

“I’m so proud of our three seniors who did run (Timmons, Delainey Burnett, Morgan Lee). They gave it everything they had.”

Burnett and Lee placed 23rd and 44th, respectively.

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