GREENVILLE – The Greenville Treaty City Invitational was greeted by perfect weather with nearly 1,100 runners taking to the Greenville City Park and streets in the annual cross country meet.
“Thank you to everyone involved in making Treaty City Invitational a great day for our community,” said Greenville head cross country coach and meet manager, Stephanie Lind.
“This is easily the biggest event in terms of participants and spectators,” Greenville athletic director Aaron Shaffer said. “We are over 1,000 runners, high school and middle school. Events like this can’t come off without a ton of help, the city, the street department, rescue, all of our coaches, family volunteers, our students and our athletes come out.”
“This event definitely shows the pride and support that we have from our community members and our city and different organizations throughout Greenville,” Shaffer added. “It’s an awesome event.”
“The Greenville Cross Country team pulls off the event, and it is a lot of coordination of services,” said Lind. “The city was incredibly helpful in managing the construction challenges – the construction crew had to pull out of the area on Wednesday to allow us to prepare the Course.”
“EMS, the police department, city parks and recreation, street department, our AD Aaron Shaffer and the Masonic Lodge are all behind the scenes heroes,” Coach Lind added. “This event would not be possible without the cross country parent volunteers. It’s just a great coming together of hard working and supporting people to make this a great day for our school and community.”
The course required some layout changes due to road and sidewalk construction taking place in the area of the invitational.
“Information was sent out early to schools regarding course changes doe to construction in the park and paving of the bike path,” Lind said. “Unfortunately we lost a few school this year. We still had a great turn-out. My favorite part of the day is riding in the Gator in the first race watching 200 athletes from a lot of local schools charging forward and seeing all of our hard work pulling off a great race.”
The top Darke County team was the Greenville boys, who finished the runner up in the large school division to Tippecanoe. Riley Emerick led Greenville by finishing second overall in 16:23.1, Alex Subler finished 15th in 17:26.0, Matt Karns finished 17th in 17:38.9, Jacob Watson finished 25th in 18:00.4, Seth Shaffer finished 26th in 18:00.5. Gabriel Stevens finished 30th in 18:11.1, Luke Rammel 39th in 18:41.3, Noah Stevens 42nd in 18:43.1 and Joey Thomas 44th in 18:52.7 to round out the top 50 finishers.
“Our Greenville athletes had a great day,” Lind noted. The high school boys team got in the podium in third behind Tipp City and Northmont. Riley Emeric was runner-up in the large school division race. Alex Subler, Matt Karns and Jacob Watson all earned medals for placing in the top 25.”
“It’s a lot of ice bags, a lot of aches and pains and we stretched a few people out – most of it is just ice,” said Greenville athletic trainer Alyse Grilliot. “Monitoring the finish line just to catch anybody that collapses or has trouble breathing. “It is a team effort between Wayne Health Sports and Greenville Rescue to come together and provide good care for all the athletes.”
Versailles was the top Darke County school in the small girls Division with a fifth place finish followed by Ansonia in 11th place and Bradford coming in 12th. Madelyn Holzapfel finished 19th for Versailles in 21:34.1 and Lauren Menke finish 24th with a time of 21:45.5.
Greenville finished fifth in the large division girls with the Lady Wave’s Isabelle Rammel finishing third with a time of 19:38.6 and Tessa Fine finishing 21st in 22:10.3.
“Isabelle Rammel finished third overall in the large division girl’s race,” Lind said. “Tessa Fine earned a medal for 25th. We had many personal records with many kids dropping nearly a minute from their race times last week. The kids work hard on their home course and represent their community well.”
Versailles finished fifth in the small boys division, Ansonia finished 18th and Mississinawa Valley placed 21st overall. Versailles’ Matt Cromwell led Darke County runners with a 18:06.5 time for a 26th place finish.
South Adams won the small school boys division and Liberty Center won the small school girls division.
Fort Loramie won the large school girls division and Tippecanoe won the large school boys division.
Versailles finished third in the middle school girls and Greenville finished 13th.
Versailles finished seventh in the middle school boys, Union City, IN placed 9th and Greenville finished 11th.
“We have a great turnout again,” said Greenville High School Principal Stan Hughes. “It’s a great service for our community and a great service for all of our cross country runners in this area.”
“They have worked all week long on getting this course ready and there are some significant changes this year due to some of the construction around the area, so it took a lot of work, a lot of effort,” concluded Hughes. “People have really responded very well. The teams have complemented our coaches and I’ll complement our coaches in getting this event ready. We had a tremendous amount of community support and parental support getting those things finished.”
For complete results from the Treaty City Invitational, visit https://livefinishtiming.com.
