Ashland Source will select one student athlete to be recognized as the Park National Bank Athlete of the Month during the 2023-24 school year. Nominations for Athlete of the Month are accepted from Athletic Directors and Coaches, but are ultimately chosen by Ashland Source and are based on the student’s exceptional athletic performance, effective teamwork and achievement in their communities. Park National Bank is proud to support this initiative and is giving the athletic department of each school $1,000 in honor of each athlete chosen.
NANKIN – It’s a good thing the skin grew back onto Isaik Schoch’s foot.
Entering his final season for the Mapleton boys cross country team, the senior was coming off back-to-back qualifications to the state meet and had a Firelands Conference title to defend.
But on a camping trip before Schoch kicked off his farewell campaign, he accidentally dumped a pot of boiling water on his foot.
He missed about three weeks of training before wrapping the foot in medical tape, pushing through workouts and eventually recovering to set sail on a historic fall for the Mounties.
The end result was an effort worthy of the Park National Bank Athlete of the Month honor for the Ashland Source coverage area for November.
“It was definitely my most enjoyable season out of my six years being in the cross country program,” said the 6-foot-2 Schoch. “You can always say from every race that you run you could have done a little bit better, could have run a little bit faster, but from this season, even though I didn’t get the goal time that I wanted, I have no regrets.”
It would be hard to find a regrettable moment on the course for Schoch, particularly this year.
His 16:17 clocking at Fortress Obetz the first weekend in November was good enough for a 19th-place, All-Ohio finish in the Division III boys state cross country championships – the highest placement of any boys runner in the area.
That capped a career with a rare three state qualifications (31st place as a junior, 45th as a sophomore) and came a few weeks after Schoch became the first Mapleton runner to win back-to-back Firelands Conference titles since Pete Murtaugh in 1972-73.
That effort helped lead the Mounties to their first FC team title since 2017.
“When you talk about wanting to coach good young men and young women, he made the job very easy because he was always of the utmost character and faith,” MHS cross country coach Joe Ortiz said. “The challenge for me was just trying to spread as much as I could of him to influence others to help them grow our program in the direction that I think all coaches want it to be.”
“When he was a seventh- and eighth-grader, the high schoolers wanted him on the team because they knew he would have helped them as a scorer in the top five,” the coach added. “He’s definitely been a big name for the program for a number of years now.”
While Schoch has been home-schooled less than two miles up the road from Mapleton, he’s spent one-third of his life running for the Mounties.
He set the Mapleton Middle School two-mile record (11:11) and was routinely close to breaking the individual class records in high school. Not bad for someone Ortiz said practically had to be dragged out onto a course by his sister, current Mapleton cross country and track assistant coach Andra Reed, when he initially started running as a youngster.
“I wasn’t familiar at all with the public school system, so when I first joined, it was a little bit different,” Schoch said. “But I became familiar with it very quickly and definitely fell in love with the team.”
“Just having the fellowship with the team throughout my entire career, it’s just been awesome,” he said. “I couldn’t ask for a better group of guys to spend these last six years with.”
Ortiz said his senior has always been a team-first, steady performer. The son of Todd and Leann Schoch, Isaik actually had one of his biggest impacts off the course this fall.
After the tragic passing of Mapleton senior Bre McKean, Ortiz said Schoch led a prayer meeting before the school’s first day back. Schoch’s mom said it is that type of camaraderie and character that she saw grow during her son’s participation on the Mountie teams.
“When Bre passed away, me and one of my teammates, we just roamed through the halls and we wanted to be present for people, to see if they needed to talk, if they needed prayer,” said Schoch, who also participates in the worship band at New London Alliance Church. “We wanted to be there.”
Ortiz has coached at MHS for a little over a decade now and said when a team has a high-quality runner, it often takes on some of the personality of that runner. He felt that was the case with Schoch.
Also a state-qualifier in the 1,600-meter run for the Mapleton track squad (he’ll enter the spring season just 8 seconds off the school record in that event), Schoch’s rise as a cross country runner mirrored Mapleton’s rise as a team.
The Mounties had fourth-place team finishes his freshman and sophomore seasons, when he placed sixth and fifth overall, respectively. But the Mounties were runners-up last season when Schoch won in 16:44, then took the FC crown this fall when his 16:15 was the fastest time in the FC Championships since Mapleton’s Drew Roberts ran a 15:49.
Roberts is the only MHS runner with faster times than Schoch’s PR of 16:12, and Ortiz said he’s certain Schoch would have gotten below the 16-minute mark had he scheduled a few of the easier courses many other teams run.
Either way, the senior goes down as one of the best to ever compete for the Mounties. Schoch said he plans to get into a trade after school and will add to the list of half-marathons in which he’s already competed.
“He has talent in distance-running,” Ortiz said, “and that’s been a really neat opportunity for him to be a light to teammates, to people from other teams, to people in other sports programs.”
