First time the charm for freshman miler Evie Fortney in season-opening track and field meet

TOM KEEGAN
Onwardtrojans.com

One meet into her Chesterton track and field career, freshman Evie Fortney sounded like a distance runner who has a pretty good idea of what event suits her best.
“I really like the mile,” Fortney said. “I like that it’s not really, like, pacing. It’s kind of just like you go for it and you don’t have to think about it.”
The race comes naturally to her and she made her debut a memorable one in Wednesday’s season-opening outdoor track and field meet in a double dual vs. Highland and Gary West Side.
Fortney placed first in the varsity 1600 meters and won the JV heat in the 800.
Fortney ran a 5:38 and kept a talented trio of sophomores in her rearview mirror: Paige Clancy (5:42), Hannah Haring (5:44) and Natalie Williams (5:58).
“I kind of surprised myself a little bit,” Fortney said. “It was really windy, so I wasn't expecting to do as well as I did.”
Fortney swims in the winter and even took a lesson learned in the pool onto the track. She said her favorite part of the mile race is “probably the third lap because that's the part where nobody knows how to run it and everybody dies off on that lap. So you always just have to go fast on that lap. It's a tactic in the 200 freestyle that one of my old coaches taught me, so I just translated it to the mile.”
And it worked.
Fortney impressed coach Lindsay Moskalick the way she ran the mile in a distance medley relay, taking the baton with a big lead and running well without anyone pushing her.
She didn’t bring any tactic into the 800, but did take something out of it.
“That was the first time I ran the 800, so I didn't really know what to do,” Moskalick said. “But it was fun. I would say I went out a little too fast, and it'd be better if I didn't sprint the first lap and kind of took it a little easier, and then went faster the second lap.”
Fortney said sophomores Clancy, Haring, Williams and Natalie White have been “very helpful” in helping her make the transition from high school. Running cross country, she said, also prepared her well for training.
“High school is a lot harder,” she said. “You didn’t really have workouts in middle school. You kind of just ran around. So it’s harder and more advanced. Running cross country made it an easier transition to what we’re doing now.”
Not every runner trying a new event was a freshman. Senior Kennedi Bradley, second in the state in the 100 last season and fifth in the 200, and fifth in the 100 as a sophomore, ran the open 400 for the first time.
Teammate Gretta McCrovitz edged her in an exciting race, finishing in 59.81, compared to Bradley’s 59.84.
“It’s one of my favorite races now,” said Bradley, who won the 100 and 200 at the meet. “It’s just a fun race. It’s tough after when your legs are dying, but you feel so good about yourself. You’re like: ‘I just sprinted a full lap.”
Other Chesterton event winners included Eva Komp in the high jump, Allison Van Kley in the 800, Lux Mountford in the 300 hurdles, and Taylor Kisic, Haring, Van Kley and Clancy in the 4x400.