<p><em>In a normal year, the spring sports postseason would be upon us. Alas, the COVID-19 pandemic wiped the entire spring schedule clean, bringing the 2019-20 athletic campaign to a premature end.</em></p><p><em><em>As summer approaches,</em> we’re taking a look back and reviewing each Johnson County high school’s year in sports. Today’s focus: the Whiteland Warriors.</em></p><p>The passing of the torch hasn’t been what outgoing Whiteland athletic director Ken Sears envisioned.</p><p>Sears, a community staple dating back to the mid-1970s, when he played football, basketball and baseball, announced his plans to retire after the 2019-20 school year. He is contracted through June.</p>[sc:text-divider text-divider-title="Story continues below gallery" ]<p>Due to precautions taken because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Sears hasn’t been able to work closely with his successor, former middle school AD David Edens.</p><p>Additionally, Sears sympathizes with student-athletes who didn’t get the chance to experience a spring sports season.</p><p>“It’s given me an early taste of retirement is what it’s done. It’s obviously been crazy for everyone in the world,” Sears said of the pandemic. “It’s tough when you’re trying to go out with a bunch of seniors who you know and like. The kids have worked so hard, and a lot of them aren’t going to play sports in college, so this is it for them.”</p><p>The school year started tragically Whiteland when sophomore football player Ryan Latham died in his sleep hours after Whiteland’s season-opening game against Columbus East. The Warriors lost two of the next three games but eventually responded with five consecutive victories.</p><p>Coach Darrin Fisher’s club then hung tough for three quarters in a first-round sectional game against Class 5A No. 1 New Palestine, but the Dragons pulled away late for a 35-7 triumph.</p><p>“The tragedy that happened with one of their teammates, the thing I’m most proud of is together we went through those stages of grief. We struggled through those stages,” Fisher said. “I’m not sure football was our No. 1 priority at that time. Those were not normal weeks at all.</p><p>“After those stages of grief, there was a joy of being together and playing football. The kids made a decision that they were truly playing this game for each other. We stacked great days on top of each other after some horrible days.”</p><p>Before the pandemic shut down schools and made social distancing the norm rather than the exception, Whiteland’s fall and winter sports seasons yielded several other success stories.</p><p>The girls cross country team, led by sophomore Katia Olmstead, placed second at sectional and third at regional to advance to the Shelbyville Semistate.</p><p>“Making it to semistate was a pretty big milestone for us,” said coach Gerry Emerson, whose team was also runner-up at the Johnson County and Mid-State Conference meets. “This was probably the deepest team I’ve had, which made us competitive within our own team.”</p><p>Olmstead crossed the finish line fifth at sectional, while junior Alexa Brodnik was 10th, a spot ahead of senior Erika Walling. A week later, Olmstead had a seventh-place performance at the Franklin Regional.</p><p>“It was very competitive. As we’re progressing forward, everyone on the team is getting better,” said Olmstead, whose season-best time of 19 minutes, 59.2 seconds at regional was roughly a minute faster than her fastest time as a ninth-grader. “On the girls team, the times are very close together. It makes practicing a lot easier.”</p><p>Boys cross country mapped a similar postseason course, reaching semistate after third- and fourth-place efforts at sectional and regional, respectively. Junior Will Jefferson won at both venues, but he was battling a flu during semistate and finished an uncharacteristic 88th.</p><p>“The girls and boys seasons were very similar,” Emerson said. “On the boys side, Will is a big difference-maker for us, and with the girls it’s depth.”</p><p>Whiteland’s boys soccer team, led by midfielders Riccardo Sicchiero and Trevor Pike, tied for the top spot in the Mid-State Conference with a 6-1 league record. The Warriors finished 10-4-3 overall after dropping a 4-1 decision to Perry Meridian in the first round of the sectional.</p><p>“I view it as a very successful season. We had one of the best years we’ve had as a program,” Pike said. “Going into sectional, the mindset we had was that we had beaten this team before. But Perry Meridian studied us pretty hard, and all the weaknesses they had in the first game they fixed for sectional.”</p><p>The boys tennis team made it to the final match of sectional before losing, 3-2, to host Center Grove. The Warriors finished 18-3 overall and has only lost to Avon and Center Grove in team play over the past two seasons.</p><p>A promising glimpse of the school’s wrestling future was on display in the winter. Freshmen Elijah Brooks, Joey Buttler and Jakarrey Oliver won their respective weight classes at the Johnson County meet. Brooks and Buttler went on to semistate at 106 and 113 pounds, respectively, both just missing the semifinal round.</p><p>Whiteland’s year of transition was also felt on the basketball court.</p><p>Nate Cangany took over as boys coach, while Kyle Shipp, another former star athlete for the Warriors, resigned after eight seasons coaching the girls to become an assistant athletic director at Shelbyville High School.</p><p>In Whiteland’s athletic office, Edens will officially take over for Sears on July 1.</p><p>As a 1994 Whiteland graduate, Edens grew up viewing Sears as something of a mythical figure due to the latter’s athletic accomplishments for the Warriors and later as a baseball player at North Carolina State University. He had looked forward to learning these past few weeks from both Sears and assistant AD Todd Croy.</p><p>“Just from a totally personal angle, I was going to spend a lot of time this spring with Ken and Todd while also doing what I needed to do at the middle school,” Edens said. “To be able to get a spring sports season under my belt was going to be big. I anticipate now having to bug Ken in the fall more than I thought.”</p><p>In the meantime, Edens, who was the middle school AD for eight years, already had the chance to make his first hire, bringing in Ashley Fouch last week to replace Shipp as girls basketball coach. He has also been brainstorming ways to make games, meets and matches something special whenever the 2020-21 sports calendar starts.</p><p>“Athletics are in good shape. We have solid coaches,” Edens said. “For me, I’m obsessed with trying to create atmosphere to get kids to the games. Right now, it’s about trying to come up with ideas and then hit the ground running.”</p>
