10:06am: Talkline with Hoppy Kercheval

Ripley’s Starcher wins female McCoy Award

— By Rick Ryan, Charleston Gazette-Mail

Even though she’s just 16 and yet to compete in her junior season at Ripley, Tori Starcher has already carved out quite the resume in high school track.

Starcher has run in eight events at the state meet at University of Charleston Stadium — six individual and two relays — and won all of them. She also placed seventh last June in the 800-meter run during the prestigious New Balance Nationals in Greensboro, North Carolina, turning in a state-record time of 2 minutes, 7.42 seconds.

But for her, all the personal accomplishments seem to take a back seat to what she helped the Vikings accomplish last spring at UC Stadium, when they captured the first state championship in the history of the school’s track program. For Starcher, it was sweet vindication after Ripley was edged by Morgantown by two points for the 2017 state title.

“We were all kind of looking for redemption coming into the year,” Starcher said. “All of us knew our goal coming into the weekend [of the state meet], and we just wanted to go out there and leave everything on the track, give it all we had. Being part of the first state championship team is really awesome.”

For all her individual accomplishments, as well as her significant donation to the team’s historic achievement, Starcher has been selected as the winner of the Ray McCoy Award as the female track athlete of the year in West Virginia, leading in voting conducted by the West Virginia Sports Writers Association.

The WVSWA will recognize Starcher during the 73rd annual Victory Awards Dinner, set for May 5 at the Embassy Suites in Charleston.

Despite her young age, Starcher has already been a long-running success story at Ripley. As both a freshman and sophomore, she swept all three individual distance runs at the Class AAA state meet — the 800, 1,600 and 3,200 — and also ran a leg on the Vikings’ victorious 4×400 relay. Her personal total of 321/2 points last May earned high-point honors in AAA and represented nearly 44 percent of Ripley’s total as it topped Morgantown 74-60 for the team crown.

She set a state meet record of 4:49.14 in the 1,600 last spring as a sophomore after competing on a 4×400 exchange the previous season that established a state meet mark of 4:01.82. Her other winning marks in the 2018 state meet were also personal bests — 2:08.90 in the 800, 10:29.87 in the 3,200 and 4:08.63 in the 4×400.

Starcher expects to run the same four events as a junior this year for coach Krystle Cunningham, and looks forward to the Vikings’ quest for a three-peat in the 4×400. Her personal goals remain simple, and as always are tied into the team’s fortunes.

“Probably just bettering my times,” she said, “and performing well for my team come the regionals and state meet. Obviously, we have the same plan that we’re going to try to go out and compete for another state title this year. We all had to focus on what we had to do last year to get where we were. We all have the same plans going into this year, and I know a lot of them are training more.

“The older ones are taking the younger ones under their wings, and have brought them more into a winter-training thing, like treadmill training. Everybody seems to be working harder during the preseason, more than we have been. For me, I just want to represent my team and Ripley and it’s great to have the ability to compete in track as well as we have the past few years.”

In the off-season, Starcher runs with the West Virginia Flyers, a club out of Morgantown that participates in about eight indoor meets during the winter months. She also plans to compete in cross country as a senior after having to sit out last fall due to injuries. Starcher won the AAA cross country title as a sophomore with a time of 17:34.98 for the 5-kilometer course.

Starcher led the McCoy voting ahead of Jonna Ferrell (Doddridge County), who won four individual events in the Class A state meet and led her team to the state title; Isabella Bowen (Bridgeport), who swept three individual sprint events in the AA meet to help her team capture the state title; and Mikah Alleyne (Woodrow Wilson), who won three events in the AAA state meet.





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