Kent woman wins first two events

By John Bassetti

Jane Evely surprised even herself with the first day sweep.

CANFIELD — Jane Evely of Kent won both the time trial and the criterium for Women 1-2-3 during Friday’s Tour of the Valley.

“I did better than I thought I would,” Evely said of her 12:28 time-trial finish Friday morning in Ellsworth Twp.

The criterium in Canfield in the afternoon was a good, hard race, said Evely, a three-time national masters champion.

“The girls from Team Dayton [which included Emily Walling and Terra Kier] would send somebody up the road,” Evely said of her stiffest competition around the street course that lasted approximately 45 minutes.

“But I had great help from my teammate, Jane Geisse, who is more known as a sprinter. She was able to do more work during the race to kind of get me back to the people who had gone off. So, the Dayton [team] girls did a great job making our team work hard, then [Jane] did a great job keeping me in there.”

With a lap-and-a-half to go, Erika Howard of Athens, Ohio, crashed.

“That kind of shakes things up,” Evely said, “so we came through and I was able to utilize Team Dayton for a nice lead-out.”

Evely said she took the lead approaching a left turn at the end of Court St., in view of the Village Green for a final time.

Howard’s misfortune came as she was leading.

“She was in front of me,” Evely said, “but I hate to say, she skidded right off into the grass. She kind of hit a bump and took a bad angle heading into the turn and just wasn’t able to pull it back on to the road again and went into the grass.”

Howard said she had never fallen before.

“Oh well, it happens,” Howard said.

Unlike her Team SummaCare allies, Evely was wearing her national championship jersey during the Women’s 1-2-3 race, then pulled the yellow over top at the awards podium.

“I’m allowed to wear the national championship jersey for criteriums until next year,” said the Masters 40+ ace.

Her three masters national wins came in succession, as recent as July 1 in Louisville, Ky.

Team SummaCare, located in Akron, is an insurance company for Summa Health System.

“They sponsor an elite women’s team,” Evely said.

Evely was pleased that the Canfield course was closed, meaning riders didn’t have to worry about any traffic.

“That’s really, really nice.”

In conjuction with the Women 1-2-3 criterium was the Women 4 event, which was won by Kier.

Kier was third in the criterium but won the Women’s 4 time trial to earn the yellow jersey for her classification.

In the criterium, Kier said that she and Walling were in sync.

“We just worked together, trading off [alternating] attacks and making girls [from other teams] chase. It worked out well.”

Kier, of Dayton, never wore the yellow before.

bassetti@vindy.com