Lima Senior’s Chance Sanders catches a touchdown pass against Toledo Woodward’s Daudi Dotson during a game this season at Spartan Stadium. The Spartans’ league championship run was the top local sports story of 2023.
Richard Parrish | The Lima News
The turnaround in Lima Senior’s football fortunes this season is the leader of The Lima News Top 10 Local Sports Stories in 2023.
It was unexpected. It was exciting. And it energized a football program that had suffered through six consecutive losing seasons.
Lima Senior finished the season with a 9-3 record, advanced to the second round of the playoffs and won the Toledo City League for its first league championship in football since 1996.
All of this happened in the first season for head coach Bill Lawrence, who promised the Spartans were “going to do as much as we can to score as much we can every week” when he was hired.
Lawrence came to Lima Senior after spending 16 years as an assistant at Kenton and brought Mike Mauk’s pass-dominated offense to Lima Senior.
With sophomore quarterback Ja’Niaus Hall throwing for 3,992 yards and 46 touchdowns and receivers Zaveon Garner and Chance Sanders both going over 1,000 yards receiving, the Spartans scored 35 points or more in eight of their games.
The No. 2 local sports story of the year is Ottawa-Glandorf’s Colin White signing to play basketball for Ohio State.
White, a four-year starter for the Titans, has been first-team All-Ohio as a sophomore and junior and is a two-time Western Buckeye League Player of the Year. The 6-6 small forward/guard came into this season with 1,331 career points and has a chance to break Tim Pollitz’s Ottawa-Glandorf career scoring record of 1,693 points.
His five finalists were Ohio State, Northwestern, Cincinnati, Butler and TCU.
No. 3 on the list is Lima Central Catholic boys basketball coach Frank Kill resigning after holding that position since the 2010-2011 season.
The Thunderbirds won state championships in 2014 and 2016 and were state runner-up in 2015 when Kill, who won a state championship as a player at Lincolnview in 1997, was their head coach.
Kill had a 219-106 career record at LCC. He said he was going to leave coaching and teaching and pursue a new career.
The No. 4 story is Lima Central Catholic returning to the Northwest Conference after playing as an independent since 2013.
The Thunderbirds were in the NWC from 2006 to 2013 but were given two options — withdraw from the conference or be voted out — when some of the conference’s schools thought as a private school LCC had an unfair advantage.
When Ada and Leipsic announced plans this year to leave the NWC, the league and LCC got back together, starting with the 2024-2025 school year.
A track story is the No. 5 local sports story of 2023. Ottawa-Glandorf’s Alexa Fortman repeated as a two-time state champion at the state track and field meet as a senior. Fortman won the Division II 400 meters and 800 meters at the state track meet, the same two races she won as a junior. She also ran on the Titans’ state champion 1,600-meter relay team with Olivia Fenbert, Corinne Closson and Averie Fox.
Allen East wrestler Eli Criblez’s historic individual championship at the state wrestling meet is the No. 6 story of the year.
Criblez became the first Allen East wrestler to win a state championship with a 3-2 victory over Hanoverton United’s Dallas McCracken in the finals of the Division III 285-pound division. Criblez finished his senior season with a 49-1 record.
Two three-peats of oh-so-close gets the No. 7 spot. Ottawa-Glandorf’s girls soccer team finished state runner-up in Division II for the third year in a row. And the Titans boys basketball team played in the Division III state tournament for the third year in a row – state runner-up the last two years and state semifinalist the year before that.
The No. 8 story, the death of The Lima News sportswriter Tom Usher, hit close to home for The Lima News, followers of high school sports, Lima Locos fans and many others. He told the stories of area athletes in The Lima News for 37 years.
The No. 9 story is the Lima Locos winning the Great Lakes Summer Collegiate League championship for the seventh time in the team’s history.
A show of strength claimed the final spot on the list of top stories when three Putnam County athletes finished 1-2-3 in the boys discus at the Division III state track meet. Columbus Grove’s Tadd Koch won with a throw of 175 feet, 2 inches, his teammate Lawson Maag was second at 173-1 and Leipsic’s Seth Apple was third at 171-0.
