BW shines at OCC Capital track championships

Big Wal­nut posted a pair of top-three fin­ishes behind New Albany in last week’s Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion boys and girls track and field cham­pi­onships held at Hilliard Bradley High School.

Joe Evener’s Golden Eagle girls squad placed sec­ond with 124 1/2 points behind New Albany’s 153 points while Eric Myers’ Golden Eagle boys placed third with 81 points behind New Albany’s 182 points. Watkins Memo­r­ial was sec­ond with 173 points.

Big Walnut’s girls cap­tured three Cap­i­tal Divi­sion cham­pi­onships. Olivia Small won the long jump title with a jump of 17 feet, 8 1/2 inches while Jamie Annis claimed the 100-meter high hur­dles crown with a time of 0:15.11 sec­onds. The quar­tet of Kris­ten Carty, Jamie Annis, Small and Leah Thomas broke the school record with a time of 0:49.35 sec­onds in win­ning the 4x100 relay.

Granville aces BW 1-0 in 8-inning DII District softball nailbiter

PICKERINGTON — In a clas­sic pitch­ing dual, Granville’s Abby Barker out dueled Big Walnut’s Kate Petty in a 1–0 Divi­sion II Cen­tral Dis­trict Tour­na­ment Semi­fi­nal matchup between the fourth-seeded Blue Aces and fifth-seeded Golden Eagles Mon­day after­noon at Pick­er­ing­ton Cen­tral High School.

Granville (21–6) scored the win­ning run in the bot­tom of the eighth to end the stand­off between Barker and Petty. With one out, the Blue Aces loaded the bases on a Mala Peter­son sin­gle down the left field line, a walk on a 3–2 count to Vega Throphilvs and a throw­ing error on Anna Moorhead’s sac­ri­fice bunt attempt. On Petty’s first pitch to Sil­via Simon, Simon dropped a sin­gle into short left-center to bring Peter­son home with the win­ning tally.

“It was a tough loss,” Big Wal­nut head coach Jeff Hat­field said. “Kate pitched a gem, but we could not get any­thing going against Barker who matched Kate pitch for pitch … it was a tough game to lose.”

DeSales sidelines Golden Eagles, 3-2 in DII District baseball semfinais

Big Wal­nut ral­lied late, plat­ing a pair of runs in the final three innings, but the Golden Eagle come­back came up a run short as St. Fran­cis DeSales held on for a 3–2 Divi­sion II Cen­tral Dis­trict semi­fi­nal win Mon­day after­noon at Hamil­ton Town­ship High School.

The 11th-seeded Stal­lions (14–16) opened the scor­ing with a run in the third and another in the fourth to take a 2–0 lead into the game’s later stages.

Golden Eagles sweep Elite 8 Championship Meet

Big Wal­nut secured county brag­ging rights in impres­sive fash­ion, with both its track and field teams tak­ing top hon­ors at the always-competitive Elite 8 Cham­pi­onship Thurs­day at Golden Eagle Sta­dium in Sunbury.

The Golden Eagle girls, set­ting five meet, two sta­dium and one school record, secured a total of 159 points, top­ping runner-up Olen­tangy Lib­erty (146), Olen­tangy Orange (84), Olen­tangy (54), Delaware Hayes (36), Buck­eye Val­ley (39), Delaware Chris­t­ian (2) and Pow­ell Vil­lage Acad­emy (1).

The BW boys, mean­while, col­lected 131 points to edge second-place Lib­erty (127) and third-place Olen­tangy (97). Delaware Hayes (69), Olen­tangy Orange (57) and Buck­eye Val­ley (42) rounded out the scoring.

K.Petty, Walker, Brown combine to throw perfect game at South in DII opener

Five innings, no hits, 15 strikeouts …

Fifth-seeded Big Wal­nut (17–8) opened the 2013 Divi­sion II Cen­tral Dis­trict Tour­na­ment Mon­day after­noon with a 16–0 per­fect game vic­tory over vis­it­ing Colum­bus South (5–15) in Sec­tional play at Sunbury.

Fresh­man Kate Petty, senior Ali Walker and fresh­man Rachel Brown com­bined to retire all 15 Bull­dog bat­ters they faced on strike­outs, 8 on called third strikes and 7 on swing­ing third strikes. Petty started and worked the first two innings, strik­ing out six. Walker came on in relief in the third and fanned the next six South bat­ters. Brown, called up from the Golden Eagles JV ros­ter, retired all three bat­ters she faced as she struck out three on just 10 pitches.

OHSAA leveling division playing fields?

Any Big Wal­nut High School stu­dent involved in ath­let­ics under­stands the impor­tance between being an Ohio High School Ath­letic Asso­ci­a­tion Divi­sion I team and an OHSAA Divi­sion II team.

If Big Walnut’s stu­dent pop­u­la­tion lands a team in Divi­sion I, Big Wal­nut is typ­i­cally one of the small­est schools in the divi­sion. Being a smaller school means less of a tal­ent pool, and less tal­ent means the school is unlikely to advance very deep in post­sea­son tour­na­ment play, let alone have a real­is­tic chance of win­ning a state title.

Exac­er­bat­ing the prob­lem is the ongo­ing con­tro­versy about pri­vate, parochial and open-enrollment schools located within a pub­lic school dis­trict that draws tal­ent from a geo­graphic area larger than that pub­lic school dis­trict, and yet their stu­dent pop­u­la­tions keep them in lower divi­sions – which they then tend to dom­i­nate on the play­ing field, court and track.

Kate Petty no-hits Wildcats; posts 10-2 complete game victory over Cardinals

Fresh­man Kate Petty had a day that most pitch­ers only dream about.

Petty threw two com­plete games, includ­ing a first-game no-hitter against West­er­ville South, in Big Walnut’s 4–0, 10–2 sweep of the Wild­cats and Thomas Wor­thing­ton Sat­ur­day in front of the home­town fans Sat­ur­day in Sunbury.

Petty was in com­plete com­mand against South with her first no-hitter, a per­for­mance that saw the fresh­man righthander issue only one base on balls while strik­ing out three. She was sup­ported in the field by an error­less defense.

“Kate was in com­plete con­trol against a good West­er­ville South team,” Golden Eagle assis­tant coach Tim Rioux said. “As a team, we had a really good weekend.”

Big Walnut edges Orange in 6-5 nailbiter

The Golden Eagles took this one down to the wire …

Big Wal­nut, after watch­ing a 4–2 lead slip away in the top of the sev­enth inning, ral­lied for two runs in the bot­tom of the inning to stun Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion leader Olen­tangy Orange in a 6–5 thriller last Wednes­day (May 1) in Sunbury.

“Our kids were excited to play through­out the game … they came in ready to play and I think that was evi­dent the way they responded in the bot­tom of the sev­enth,” Golden Eagle head coach Chris Holly said. “We made the most of our scor­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties with some clutch hit­ting, we made some big plays in the field behind Cole Harbin who pitched one of his best games of the sea­son … this was a big win for us going into the upcom­ing postseason.”