ASHLAND – If ever there was a time for the Ashland High School track and field teams to blare House of Pain’s infamous hype song “Jump Around,” it might just be this week.
Collectively, the Arrows will have three of the best jumpers in school history in action during the Division I state championships, including hurdler Jayden Goings, high jumper Frankie Rupsis and long jumper Dakota Kruty.
Goings is a senior state returner after having qualified in three events last year and is headed to Ashland University on track and academic scholarships.
Rupsis and Kruty are both juniors headed to state for the first time, with eyes on eventually competing in college as well.
Regardless of this week’s results, all three are locked into the record books among the most talented Arrows ever to compete in their events.
“I think it just shows how much we’ve all put into it,” Kruty said. “We all care so much about track.”
Here’s a look at the path for all three:
Senior Jayden Goings
300 Hurdles (prelims 5:25 p.m. Friday, finals 4:35 p.m. Saturday; seeded t-9th)
Goings has been stacking achievements in the 110- and 300-meter hurdles for a few years now, joining AHS boys track and field coach Ryan Stackhouse and AHS record-holder Hudson McDaniel as one of just three hurdling state qualifiers for the Ashland boys in the last quarter-century.
This spring, he won an Ohio Cardinal Conference title in the 110s and a Mansfield Mehock Relays crown in the 300s.
He’s set PRs each of the last two seasons at regionals, with his 14.47 in the 110s (second-fastest in AHS history) sending him to state a year ago and his 38.73 in the 300s (third in school history) launching him to Columbus this spring.
Last season, Goings also was part of Ashland’s 4×200 and 4×400 relays at state.
“Last year, my mindset was more survive and advance (alongside his relay teammates),” Goings said. “I was more focused on the team and on all of us doing good, rather than focusing on myself.
“This year I’ve focused a lot more on myself because it’s my last year … and next year I’m going to a really good track program, so I’ve got to leave a mark.”
For a while, it looked like adding to his legacy with the Arrows would be a tough task. Goings suffered a serious hamstring injury over the winter, which hampered his ability to compete during the indoor track season and forced him to miss the first three outdoor meets.
He said he didn’t feel like he had found his true hurdling tempo until the OCC Championships in mid-May, when he would have swept the hurdle titles had it not been for a runner-up finish in the 300s to Lexington’s OCC Runner of the Year Latrell Hughes.
“It was just a battle with myself mentally and physically,” Goings said. “I put in a lot of extra hours on the track and a lot of hours in the gym to make that comeback and get my body where it needed to be to compete.
“This year, I definitely feel like having that setback and having to recoup and come back and try to find myself back in that mode that I left off in last year was probably my biggest obstacle.”
Goings’ frustrations came in a different form last week after his regional run in the 110s. Despite matching the 14.59 clocking of St. John’s Jesuit’s fourth-place Caleb Root on the meet results, Goings was awarded fifth by meet officials, rather than a tie and a run-off with Root for a spot at state.
Appeals made by Stackhouse at both the regional meet and earlier this week with the OHSAA did not change the outcome. Rather than run in a pair of events, Goings’ final high school competition will come solely in the 300s.
Already part of the AHS school-record 4×200 relay last year (1:28.48) – and an All-OCC second-team pick in football last fall (49 tackles, interception) – Goings said he’s ready to go out in style.
“I was very, very frustrated because I wanted to go to states for multiple events in my senior year and at least have two more races left,” he said. “… But I’ve totally accepted it and I’m just happy that I get to compete at all, because I could still be sitting here trying to rehab my hamstring.
“I feel like I’m finally in that mode and I’m finally back to my old self.”
Junior Frankie Rupsis
High Jump (12 p.m. Saturday; seeded t-4th)
While Goings and Kruty have become household names among AHS athletes in recent seasons, Rupsis spent this school year turning herself into one of the more out-of-nowhere standouts in the history of Ashland athletics.
As a sophomore, she suffered a slight stress fracture in her back, stemming from the pounding she had taken as a competitive cheerleader at AHS and gymnast at the YMCA.
The injury – essentially the first one she ever had – forced Rupsis into a hard back brace for roughly two months. Her sophomore year was more about recovery and physical therapy than it was her showing off her budding athletic talents.
“When I refer to ‘last year,’ it was my freshman year because I really didn’t have a year of anything (as a sophomore),” Rupsis said. “My back still gets stiff, but that’s kind of expected because I am using it a lot and I still am competing in gymnastics.”
When she tried to get back into track late last season, her best clearance in the high jump was 4-4 – seven inches short of her freshman PR.
It’s a night-and-day difference this spring.
Rupsis said she’s cleared 5 feet at every meet, a steady buildup that included gold medals in the high jump at the OCC Championships (5-2), the district meet (5-4) and the regional meet (5-4).
It’s a sparkling title trifecta that also came on the heels of a swim season during which Rupsis qualified to state as a diver in just her second year in the sport.
“This year has definitely exceeded my expectations,” Rupsis said. “I kind of just wanted to slowly get back into things.
“I think I’ve just had to be very mentally strong this year and not fall into thinking about where I could have been if (the back injury) didn’t happen.”
Her athleticism certainly has shown through the years. Not only has Rupsis qualified to state in diving and track this year, but she has competed in gymnastics for about 10 years and also was the only freshman on Ashland’s state-qualifying cheerleading squad two years ago.
With all that already under her belt, Rupsis might have been viewed as a diamond in the rough just a few weeks ago. But she will have nowhere to hide this week at state, where she is tied for the No. 4 seed in the Division I high jump.
Rupsis is one of just four state-qualifying high jumpers in Arrow girls history (also Sue Culler, Dina Smith and Cirrus Robinson). In the last 30 years, only Rupsis and Robinson – whose 5-8 clearance as a senior in 2016 is the school record – have made state in the event for AHS.
“I do feel more confident in myself,” Rupsis said. “Not that I feel like I’m better than anybody else, but it’s like I see more of myself now than I did when I was in a back brace and thinking, ‘Now where do I go?’ I didn’t even want to try sports again because I was too scared (for a time).”
She said she plans to visit a few schools this summer while considering competing in the sport at the next level. But for now, she wants to be the torch-bearer at state for the Arrows, head coach Gail Walter and high jump coach Sarah LeVeck.
Teammates Vivian Walter and Kelsey Kaeser both were double-qualifiers to regionals individually for Ashland but were unable to advance out of last week’s grueling Division I meet at Port Clinton.
A senior, Walter even set a school record to place seventh in the pole vault (11-0) and she took fifth in the 100 hurdles (15.09) just a few weeks after being named OCC Combined Athlete of the Year.
Rupsis is ready to show up for her teammates this week, and to set the tone for what could be a monster senior year.
“I really like how much Coach LeVeck (has helped),” the junior said. “She sees a lot in me and just wants the best for me. We’re already looking forward to things we can do for next season.”
Junior Dakota Kruty
Long Jump (12 p.m. Saturday; seeded 12th)
Kruty has made it known since middle school that the long jump was his No. 1 sports love, and his passion has finally broken through to Columbus this week.
A state-placer for the Arrows as an eighth-grader (AMS record of 19 feet, 8.5 inches), the junior has been the definition of consistent improvement during his career.
“When I got the middle school record, that really kind of put things into perspective for me that I could really do something with it,” Kruty said. “That made me fall in love with it.”
“I think a lot of guys who are jumping, it’s not really their main thing that they like to do. But long jump is something that, I’ll sit on my phone and just watch clips of me and slow them down to see my form. I’m really passionate about it and I put a lot into it.”
He’s certainly been meticulous about his craft, clearing his own personal distance goals of 20 feet as a freshman, 21 feet as a sophomore and – with his OCC-winning leap of 22-4.25 last month – 22 feet as a junior.
Shockingly, Kruty is the first Arrow boy to qualify to state in the long jump since Tom Marquette placed fifth in 1978 (22-1.5).
The junior surpassed Marquette’s PR of 22-5 last week in a loaded regional field, when his PR of 22-5.25 earned him sixth place and an at-large bid to Columbus.
The big finish to his spring has him fast-tracking his No. 1 goal to Saturday.
“I’ve always had my eyes set on the school record (Tom Fowler, 22-8.5 in 1978),” Kruty said. “… I did pop a 22-foot jump before the end of the season, so now I kind of want the (record this week). I want a little bit more now than I wanted coming into the year.”
He said the 22-foot breakthrough has been a relief during a season where he felt like his distances in the sand had plateaued.
It’s impossible to doubt his talent. Kruty was part of Ashland’s district-championship 4×100 relay that also included Tyler Sauder, Garrett Davis and Jacob Holbrook. The quartet set an OCC and school record in 42.28 as well.
Individually, the junior clocked the 10th-fastest 200-meter time in AHS history this spring, too, at 22.47. A two-time conference champ in the long jump, he was this year’s OCC Combined Athlete of the Year.
In the fall, meanwhile, Kruty was a second-team All-OCC performer in football (353 yards, 4 touchdowns on 24 catches) while also earning second-team All-Northwest District honors as a punter (34.7 yards per punt, with eight landing inside the 20-yard line).
But his heart is on the long jump runway, and he’ll carry it through to college.
Kruty already has an offer to jump at Ashland University and has plans to visit some Mid-American Conference schools this summer after already making visits to Miami (Ohio) University and the University of Cincinnati as well.
“I really wanted to make a name for myself with this sport this year,” he said. “I know football obviously brings a lot more attention than track does, but I wanted people that watch the football games to know that I’m really a track athlete who plays football.”