MORGANTOWN — When the Clay-Battelle softball team walked off the field Thursday at the state tournament in Vienna, it marked the end of the sports calendar for the 2018-19 school year in Monongalia County.
The Cee-Bees’ run through the season, one of the best in school history, is a blueprint for how most of the year went for a majority of the teams at Morgantown, University, Trinity and C-B — triumphs, pitfalls and everything in between.
Of course, there were several trophies hoisted at the end of state tournaments or meets, the most notably being the UHS boys’ basketball team in mid-March. The Hawks won the first state title in school history after falling short in the semifinals the previous two years, but this was the season it all came together.
“It’s kind of surreal. I’m almost speechless. Other than my daughter being born, this is the happiest day of my life,” coach Joe Schmidle said after the game. “We proved a lot of people wrong that said University could never be sitting here as a Class AAA champion. It feels good to kick down that door.”
The first of the year was taken by the UHS girls’ cross-country teams in late October in Ona, the programs’ fifth-straight state championship. The Hawks were led by top 10 finishes from Zoe Shetty, Caroline Kirby and Emma Troischt.
“We’ve been working hard this whole season, and we knew that we had a good chance of winning today,” Shetty said.
The third and final team title was captured by the MHS girls’ tennis team this month, which dominated the championship round, which four of the seven individual titles.
No. 3 singles Mackenzie Sorton, No. 4 singles Bella Mascari, No. 2 doubles of Sorton and Mascari, and No. 3 doubles of Ashalia Aggarwal and Kathryn Regules finished off their seasons with titles.
“It was wonderful this year,” coach Ted Greenlee said. “We had so many contributors.”
When the dust settled, UHS claimed two team titles with MHS finishing with one.
Individually, UHS’s Frankie McCutchan won the first championship of the year in February at the state swim meet in the 500-freestyle with a time 4:53.07.
“I’m very thankful for the coaching I get, the pool time I get and my supportive teammates,” he said. “It feels really good to be the one to get that first title.”
Following the MHS girls’ tennis team’s dominance, the next Mohigans to win a title were the 4×800 girls’ relay at the state track meet May 17. Tazanna Epps, Amelia Haddox, Athena Young and Lea Hatcher finished with a time of 9:33.71.
“I feel ecstatic,” distance coach Mike Ryan said. “That was a great race by our girls. All of them ran PRs or were right at their PR. I knew they had it in them. I told them just to go do their thing and not overthink it.”
UHS freshman Sierra Lanham won her first state title the next day in the long jump with a leap of 16 feet, 10 inches.
“It felt pretty good, I’m not going to lie. Now I have three more years to get up there again,” she said.
Lastly, Clay-Battelle finally got on the board when Hailey Carreon won the 100-meter hurdles at 15.72.
“It’s a long-time coming. I really wanted it last year, but finished second. This year it was do-or-die,” she said.
Close, but not quite
The UHS girls’ basketball team made a surprising run at the state title after beating Martinsburg and upsetting Greenbrier East on the way to the championship game in March, and even stayed with No. 1 Parkersburg for two quarters, but it got away from the Hawks in the end.
“This is not the order I want to do an interview, but at the same time, I definitely want to give it up to our girls for that battle they just put out there,” coach David Price said after the game. “I think it was the gamut of all those games one day after another and we ran out of energy, and Parkersburg proved why they’re a state championship team.”
The Trinity girls reached the state semifinals after beating Magnolia in the first round, and the Trinity boys followed suit by also getting to the semis with a win over Greenbrier West.
However, both teams fell shy of the title game.
