The 2018 year was filled not with huge sports stories, but still several big ones. Here is our top 10:
1Columbus East and Columbus North win outright conference football titles in the same year for the first time ever; East moves up to Class 6A for at least the next two years after winning regional title.
The Olympians are used to winning Hoosier Hills Conference football titles. They’ve won or shared 15 in a row. The year they began that streak, 2004, the Bull Dogs won a share of their last Conference Indiana title until this season. This is the first year they both won outright conference titles.
Meanwhile, East, which won the Class 5A state title in 2017, claimed the regional this year to accumulate enough points to bump up to 6A under the IHSAA’s Tournament Success Factor. The Olympians are the first public school in any sport to move up two classes since the success factor was created.
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2 East’s Graham Rooks and Nick South win wrestling state championships, leading the Olympians to a best-ever third-place team finish.
Rooks won the 132-pound division, and South captured the 160-pound class at state. The duo, along with 126-pound state runner-up Cayden Rooks, led East to conference, sectional and regional titles and a third-place finish at the state finals.
3 East gymnast Adi Minor wins state titles on the vault and bars and ties for second in the all-around with North’s Claire Thompson, who wins the Mental Attitude Award.
Minor defended her state title on the bars and added a championship on the vault. Thompson, who had won the bars, beam and all-around titles as a sophomore and the beam championship as a junior, tied with Minor, her best friend, for second in the all-around.
4 East girls tennis duo Megna Chari and Kathryn Hodzen finish second in the state doubles finals after beating North’s Madelyn Sanders and Eva Chevalier in the semifinals.
Chari and Hozden spent about half of the regular season playing singles and half playing doubles before getting on a roll in the postseason. They met Sanders and Chevalier in the state semifinals after the North duo remained unbeaten in the postseason after the Bull Dogs team lost in the semistate.
5 North graduate Ali Patberg gets off to a sizzling start at IU, leads Hoosiers to a 11-1 start.
Patberg, the 2015 Miss Basketball and McDonald’s All-American, has been solid at point guard for the Hoosiers after sitting out last season following her transfer from Notre Dame. The redshirt-junior leads the Hoosiers in scoring (18.6), assists (5.0), steals (1.5) and minutes (35.2) and is second on the team in rebounding (6.7) heading into Big Ten play.
6 East beats North in extra innings to win first baseball sectional title since 1999; Olympians win first girls basketball sectional since 2011.
The Shelbyville Sectional baseball final had all the makings of a classic. The Olympians came from behind twice to force extra innings, then again in the eighth. Meanwhile, the East girls basketball team avenged a regular-season loss to North in the sectional semifinals, then knocked off host East Central in overtime in the final.
7 North’s Pat McKee becomes the first girls basketball coach from Columbus to coach the Indiana All-Stars.
McKee, who led the Bull Dogs to a Class 4A state title in 2015 and runner-up finishes in 2012 and 2016, was picked to lead the Indiana All-Star Girls squad in its annual home-and-home series with Kentucky. He led the Hoosier state to a split with its Bluegrass counterparts.
8 North graduate Tyler Duncan qualifies for the U.S. Open for the second time, goes through hot stretch on PGA Tour.
Duncan’s first year as a full member of the PGA Tour was a successful one. He had a pair of top-10 finishes and earned $944,021. He also qualified for the U.S. Open for the second time and his second-round 67 was that day’s third-best score.
9 Bryan Morseman becomes the first two-time Mill Race Marathon winner.
Under mild temperatures compared to last year’s race, Morseman added the marathon title to the one he won in 2015. The Bath, New York, resident finished in 2 hours, 28 minutes, 4 seconds. Laurah Lukin of Cincinnati won the women’s marathon in 3:05:08.
10 Former Columbus basketball great Butch Wade dies at age 73.
Wade led the 1963 Bull Dogs team to a No. 1 state ranking and went on to a standout career at Indiana State, where he graduated as the school’s all-time leading scorer. He later coached at North and at Central Middle School.
