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Toby Jones wins 38th Parkersburg News and Sentinel Half Marathon

By Jay W. Bennett 5 min read

PARKERSBURG -- Keystone State native Toby Jones found himself back in the winner's circle following Saturday's 38th running of The Parkersburg News and Sentinel Half Marathon.

The Grove City resident completed the new-look course in a time of 1 hour, 8 minutes and 24 seconds as he edged out John Tatter's 1:09:29 runner-up clocking.

"I won Ogden in the spring and I liked that one so much, I loved the environment, I figured this would be pretty similar so I figured why not come out and try to win another one," admitted Jones, who earned $1,000 for his effort. "I'm sponsored by Wolf Creek Waste Management. They are a timing company based out of Western, PA, so they've been supporting me all this year and last year.

"I got up at 3 a.m. to come three and a half hours, so I'm going to get a nap after my cool down. This is my first time down here. I think that may have helped me because I didn't have like all the expectations you know. I didn't really know what was coming, just kept trucking. All those other guys they were pushing and I kept on trying to make surges and they just, especially John, kept covering me. Finally I was able to break free, but he made me work for it."

Tatter, who is from Washington, D.C., collected $750 for placing second while third-place finisher Brenden Sands from Flagstaff, Arizona, earned $500 after finishing in 1:10.47 to outdistance fourth-place Zane Keppler (1:11:24) of Columbus, Ohio, and fifth-place Andrew Taylor (1:13:15) of West Lafayette, Indiana.

"This is my first time here," said Tatter. "I found it online and I looked it up. It looked like a really cool race, a cool course and a cool place that I'd never been to before, so I kind of made a weekend of it. It was a fun race and was really well organized, too. I'm going to run some marathons this fall. I've got the Columbus Marathon and a couple other races that I'm kind of doing here and there.

"Part of the reason I'm doing my races is I work for a charity called National Foundation for Cancer Research. I run this program called Play for the Cure and I also like getting out and talking about that. It's getting sports team to sign up for fundraising and they partner with us and we work together."

Tatter didn't have any particular expectations, but was more than pleased with his showing.

"We went back up a big hill to some sort of outlook (Fort Boreman) and turned back around. That's where it started hurting," Tatter said. "He led the way most of the time. I could tell he was pretty strong pretty early and about 6 miles he got me a little bit.

"I was just coming to race. I felt like a good race with good competition is like the plan for me and I was having a lot of fun out there even though it was hot. I like having good competition and people pushing me and Toby definitely got the most out of me today, so I appreciated him being out there pushing it."

Jones, who said he's yet to do a full marathon, admitted this was only his second career half marathon.

"I'm kind of like at the start of my training block going into Columbus and I'm going to do the Akron Half in like a month and Columbus will be my first full," Jones said. "I have a buddy who went to high school here so I had to come to his town. He was a Big Red. Keegan Barnette shout-out.

"We were teammates at Youngstown State. I graduated from there last year, but I'm still in grad school. I'm going to PT school right now in Youngstown. I got a year from December. It's a grind right now trying to balance that and working about 20 hours a week and then also running about 100 miles a week. I'm pretty tired."

Rounding out the top 10 placers were Scott Burnham (1:14:58) of Lowell, Parkersburg's Scott Barker (1:16:58), last year's runner-up Chase Bulten (1:17:10) of Lehigh, Iowa, as well as New Cumberland's Jared Ullom (1:19:21) and Huntington's John Archambault (1:22.29).

"It was an awesome course. It was great racing," added Tatter. "It was really fun and I definitely think it was really pretty out there. It was cool. I got to see the area a little and obviously finishing in Parkersburg and having the crowd here was a lot of fun.

"I think all in all, really cool, really fun, really hard and really hot, but I appreciated it anyway. I wish it was 30 degrees cooler."

Jones also thoroughly enjoyed his first trip to Parkersburg and said he very well could be back to defend his title in 2026.

"I hope so if I'm still running. Who knows. I might retire," quipped Jones, who added of the race "I think I hit almost every water stop today. I don't usually do that. I love the community aspect of these road races.

"Like I saw the little kids out there with their cups and I would like make sure I go find the youngest kid and then grab their cup and they'd always get all excited. That was fun."

In the half marathon overall walk competition last year’s winner James Lapinski (2:32:34) had to settle for a runner-up showing behind champion Dan Nehnevaj, who finished in 1 hour, 52 minutes and 50 seconds.

Tim Finkel took third with a time of 2 hours, 49 minutes and 22 seconds and was followed by Tim Buskirk (2:54:40) and Randy Nutter (2:55:50).

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