Gazette MVP: Ty Sgambati honed craft in Highland running career

Ty Sgambati's competitive nature was already noticeable when he was in first grade at Granger Elementary School. Apparently, the class two years ahead of him wasn't shy about capitalizing on its age, height and weight advantages during recess, and Sgambati, a recent Highland graduate and 2025 Gazette MVP for boys track and field, had the scraped knees and ripped pants to prove it. "I'm definitely very competitive," the now 6-foot-1, 160-pound Sgambati said. "If there was a scale of one to 10, I'd be a nine. I hate to lose. Even when I was playing sports growing up, I'd cry after Little League baseball games when I lost. "When we were younger, in first and second grade, it was super competitive (at recess). I hated that grade (two years older). They always beat us, but in third grade we held our own. I hated losing to them. They were the bigger, cockier students, but it was fun to have that rivalry." Michelle Farr, who ended up being an assistant track coach at Highland and worked with Sgambati throughout his four-year career, knows all about those early days. Her son Logan was in Sgambati's class at Granger Elementary and his ally on the playground. "Ty was the ultimate competitor from the start," Farr said. "He wanted to win everything. When he and Logan were in elementary school, they were paired up with the class of 2023 (at recess), so they were always playing against kids two years older than them. Logan would come home every day and tell me they beat the older kids at everything." As he aged, grew and matured, Sgambati learned to harness and channel that competitiveness while running the 400, 800 and 1,600 meters for the Hornets and also competing in cross country, but it wasn't easy. "I push myself as hard as I can, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that," he said. "I like it that way because it's going to help me out later in life when I have to go through more difficult stuff than high school running. "I really started learning to keep easy days easier toward the end of my senior year. I always thought the harder you go, the more benefit you'd get. I'd look at my watch and if I was going at seven-minute, 10-second pace (for a mile), I'd want to get it under seven. The other guys on the team, on easy days they would go really slow. I'm like, 'What are you guys doing?' Then they would literally drop 10 seconds (in a race) out of nowhere. I finally tried it and I ended up dropping six seconds in the 1,600 the week after. I'm like, 'Oh, maybe it does work.'" Though it took nearly six years for Farr's message to fully sink in — she started working with Sgambati when he was in middle school — being willing to work extremely hard also benefited the 18-year-old throughout his career. A three-time All-Gazette choice in both cross country and track, Sgambati's name is all over the Highland record book. A two-time All-Ohioan indoors and outdoors in track, he owns school marks in the 800 (1:53.00), 1,600 (4:15.31), 4x800 (7:55.06), distance medley relay (10:48.65) and 4x1,600 (18:20.32). Sgambati also set the school record in the 3,200 (9:37.86) in 2023, but it was broken two months later by Elijah Hadler (9:26.45). As a senior, he reset his personal best with a time of 9:35.75 while running in a pouring rain on a 50-degree day at the Wooster Invitational. As a senior, Sgambati ran 1:54.19 in the 800 at the prestigious New Balance Nationals and finished eighth in that event at the Division I state meet — he also was eighth at the indoor state meet — while winning Suburban League American Conference titles in the 800, 1,600 and 4x8. Prior to that, he finished fifth in the indoor 800 and 14th outdoors as a junior and seventh outdoors as a sophomore. For that, Sgambati credits the 52-year-old Farr, a highly decorated distance runner who graduated from Buckeye in 1990 — her last name was Jungbluth in those days — and went on to compete at Bowling Green. Until recent years, Farr, a teacher at Wadsworth who also coached there for a number of years, was still running high-level marathons and half-marathons. "I don't think there's a better coach I could have gotten in high school," Sgambati said. "She knows what she's talking about all the time. She pays attention to detail. She's got books and books and books of our past workouts. She'd pull up workouts from my freshman year that I didn't even remember doing. "She has so much advice and encouragement and is so positive. She is the best coach you'd ever want in high school." Farr, who became a Highland assistant when Devan Lippincott took over the program four seasons ago, is quick to return Sgambati's praise. "I'm just so proud of how he's grown, especially this season," she said. "He definitely elevates his teammates. He will yell at them, in a good way, in practice because he knows how to meet a challenge. If he sees his teammates not giving 100%, he'll get on them and they respond. "My biggest challenge was holding him back, because he wanted to go all out, all the time. The easy runs have to be easy. The hard ones will still be hard, but he wasn't taking the easy ones easy." In that sense, Sgambati's greatest strength, the willingness to work extremely hard, could sometimes be his biggest weakness. When he was on Highland's winning 4x8 and placed second in the open 800 at the SL American Conference Championships as a freshman, his belief that hard work was the solution to everything was enhanced. That approach worked in the short term, as Sgambati won league championships in the 1,600, 4x4 and 4x8 while finishing second in the 800 as a sophomore, but when his times leveled off as a junior and he ended up with two second-place and two third-place finishes at the event, he began to realize Farr might be on to something. "My junior year I put a lot of pressure on myself, and it didn't end up too well," Sgambati said. "If you run looser and focus more on having fun, you'll do a lot better. It's difficult not to care some days, but you just have to shake it off and ignore it. As we all started having more fun, it was just natural. "The light bulb for me was learning to have fun and enjoying what you do. When it's time to take it serious, take it serious, but 90% of it should be having fun with your teammates. I wish I had known that as a freshman." A three-time outdoor state qualifier, four-time indoor state qualifier and nine-time outdoor regional qualifier, Sgambati was unsure whether he wanted to run in college immediately after his high school career ended, but he now is "95% sure" he will continue to pursue cross country and track. Maryland, Miami (Fla.), Louisville and Miami (Ohio) are among the possibilities, and whatever school lands Sgambati will be getting a dedicated young man who is not afraid to work but who has learned the benefits of lightening up from time to time. "From the get-go, he had the excitement for competition and running," Lippincott said. "He wanted to make an impact right away and he was very confident, even as a freshman. When he stepped on the track, that competitiveness and desire to be the best was in him right off the bat." Sgambati, who entered Highland wanting to break the school records of 2006 graduate John Minen, who finished second in the 1,600 at the D-I state meet as a senior, chuckles a bit when he thinks about his ninth-grade season. "When I came in I was a cocky freshman, especially when I started seeing results," he said. "Since then, I've been beaten down. I've gone through everything you can possibly go through as a distance runner except for injury. Now I know that when you're on the upper end, you need to be humble. When you're on the lower end, you need to keep your head up. I've definitely grown up a ton. "I want to give a huge shout-out to my teammates, the guys who don't necessarily get covered or have their name in the paper too much. They work just as hard as anyone I've ever seen and they're so great to be around. I don't think I would have had the (senior) season I did if it weren't for them." Contact Rick Noland at (330) 721-4046 or rnoland@medina-gazette.com. 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