West Union Senior Liam Purcell Runs Cross-Country, Eyes College Future

Liam Purcell ran hurdles in a rainstorm and finished anyway. That specific stubbornness, choosing to compete when the easier call would have been to scratch, is the kind of detail that means something in Adams County, where 20.2% of residents live below the poverty line and the school district bankrolling his ambitions covers 487 square miles on a budget of $55.2 million.

Purcell is a senior at West Union High School, competing in cross-country and track. He lists cross-country as his favorite sport, which makes his answer to a routine Q&A question worth a second read: the least favorite part of high school athletics, he said, is "running." His post-graduation plan, stated without elaboration, is to "graduate college."

In Adams County, that two-word answer carries unusual freight. The county's poverty rate sits more than seven points above the national average. Sixty-one percent of West Union students are classified as economically disadvantaged, according to federal education data, a figure that frames every district budget conversation about what programs survive and which ones don't.

West Union is one of three high schools inside the Adams County/Ohio Valley School District, alongside North Adams and Peebles. The district serves roughly 3,400 students across seven buildings and spends $13,704 per student annually. How much of that reaches the cross-country coaching staff, the science labs that feed students like Purcell toward college-level coursework, and the dual-enrollment options that can cut the cost of a degree is not broken out in summary budget documents. Those line items matter: the girls' cross-country program qualified for the OHSAA state meet out of the Southeast District in 2025, proof that athletic investment can produce competitive results. Whether comparable investment is reaching science curriculum and college-access programming ahead of next year's budget cycle is the question district officials have yet to answer publicly.

Purcell's favorite subject is science. He would spend a day in Jeff Bezos's shoes if given the option, prefers the stop-motion deadpan of Fantastic Mr. Fox to most of what plays on a Friday night, and listens to Radiohead. He is the son of Stacy and Brad Purcell.

The People's Defender ran his senior profile Sunday as part of its weekly student-athlete series. The series captures the graduating cohort of Adams County student-athletes at the threshold moment before many of them leave the county for college and, often, for careers elsewhere. What programs exist to bring them back, or to make staying a genuine economic option, is the accountability question that outlasts any one senior profile.