A Blow To Brownsburg As They Lose Abby Lynch To Soccer

Lynch(377) rounding the final turn at the 2017 state meet

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Abby Lynch, last year's freshman standout at Brownsburg High School, has decided to not run cross country in 2018. She confirmed to MileSplit Indiana that she has switched to playing varsity soccer full-time.

That's a huge blow to a Brownsburg program that not only had a chance to win a state title in Indiana this fall, but potentially had an outside shot of qualifying for Nike Cross Nationals as well. 

Brownsburg would have returned six of their varsity runners who competed at states last year, and with Lynch, who ran a personal best of 17:46.40 in 2017, the team averaged 18:36.88 and its 1-through-5 split was just 88 seconds.

Based on MileSplit team 5K projections heading into the 2018 season, Brownsburg was a top 20 team on paper, and could have made good case at NXR Midwest. 

Last season Lynch attempted to compete in both sports, and did pretty well with it, until tournament season came around. Around that time, she told us, is when the two-sport workload finally caught up with her. She took a big fall in her times, due to the built up amount of dehydration she was experiencing.

Lynch said she wanted to compete in both sports last year because she wanted to give cross country a try for the first time, though she knew she still really wanted to play soccer.

The Lady Bulldogs soccer team had good success last year, going 12-5-1. The Bulldogs ended up losing to Avon in the second round of sectionals, 3-0, while the girls cross country team continued and advanced to the state meet, where they ended up taking seventh place.

Lynch said she loved the team aspect of cross country, but competing in two varsity sports at the same time was tough. In middle school, she said she ran more of the 400m races and on relay teams for Brownsburg East. In the spring, she focused on the 800m, where she ended up taking third at state with a 2:13.01.

"I've played soccer my whole life, and I really love it," she told MileSplit Indiana. "I would love to play soccer in college, it is a dream of mine."

Now with the transfer of Lauren Rinehart to Zionsville and Lynch focusing on soccer, Brownsburg will be looking for some new front runners to hopefully make it back to the state meet in October. 


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