Holmes County athletes earn podium finishes at Ohio state meet

Holmes County’s spring track season ended with two silver-medal finishes at Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium, where Norwayne’s Kaylee Graham and Waynedale’s Anna Pittman put local programs on the podium at the OHSAA Jesse Owens Track and Field State Championships. The meet ran June 4-7 in Columbus, used five divisions for the first time and drew the county’s best against Ohio’s strongest fields.

Graham delivered one of the area’s top performances with a Division IV runner-up finish in the 300-meter hurdles. Her silver medal came at the end of a race that capped months of qualifying meets, training and travel, the kind of grind that makes a state appearance itself a meaningful achievement. For Norwayne, Graham’s finish showed that a Holmes County program can send athletes beyond the district and regional rounds and still produce a podium result against the state’s best hurdlers.

Pittman gave Waynedale another podium moment by clearing 11 feet, 4 inches on her way to Division IV runner-up honors in the pole vault. The finish put her among the top vaulters in Ohio and added another state medal for a Holmes County school that had spent the season building toward that moment. In a meet where the smallest mistakes can end a medal chase, Pittman’s second-place finish rewarded the work that carried her all the way to Columbus.

Norwayne’s Lillith Dreibelbis also earned her first All-Ohio track and field medal, adding to the sense that Holmes County athletes were not just qualifying for the state meet but leaving with results that mattered. OHSAA said the 2026 championships marked the 119th annual boys state tournament and the 51st annual girls state tournament, underscoring how established the event has become. The association also said the 2025 meet drew more than 35,000 total people over two days, a reminder of the scale of the stage Holmes County athletes reached.

Back home, those finishes matter because they reflect more than individual speed, height or endurance. They point to programs built by coaches, teammates, parents and volunteers who carried athletes through a long season and into Columbus, where Holmes County once again had names worth remembering.