By RAY WILDE

Sports correspondent

LEWISTOWN — The high school career of Mifflin County’s Carter Smith is now in the history books.

How good was his high school running career?

Just think about this. Three of the most notable athletes to come out of Mifflin County didn’t have the success that he had in his high school career.

Ralph Baker played football at Lewistown High School and went on to star at Penn State and won a Super Bowl with the New York Jets.

Lewistown’s Krista Gingrich was a star player for the Lady Panthers in basketball. Sports Illustrated did a feature story on her and she went off to play for Duke University. She even went to an NCAA Final Four.

Trent Hidlay has become one of the greatest wrestlers ever to come out of Mifflin County. He went to North Carolina State and was an NCAA two-time national runner-up and he recently won a freestyle world championship in wrestling.

But, you know how many state championships that trio won in high school? A total of four. Gingrich won two for Lewistown girls basketball and Hidlay won two for the Mifflin County High School wrestling team. Unfortunately for Baker there were no high school state championships in football in his era.

Smith finished his career with eight state titles, seven individual and one on a relay team. Smith has more state titles than every high school in Mifflin County: Kishacoquillas, zero; Penn Highlands, one; Rothrock, one; Indian Valley, five; Lewistown, six; Chief Logan seven; current Mifflin County high school, seven (not counting Smith).

Since the start of his junior year in September of 2024, Smith has beaten 3,703 of 3,707 runners. He only lost two races in that span. He was beaten by a fraction of a second at the Mid-Penn cross country championship in 2024 as a junior and he lost to three runners in the state cross country championship run in 2025 as a senior by 17 seconds. Smith never lost an individual race on the Mifflin County indoor-outdoor schedule after the state cross country meet (nine races).

Smith won three state indoor titles in the 800. He won a cross country title. He won four races at the PIAA spring track and field meet, two 1600 races, one 800 and was a member of the winning two-mile relay team. Smith was a runner for all seasons, he won indoors, outdoors, middle distance and long distance.

The only Mifflin County high school achievement that comes close to what Smith has done is when Hidlay went undefeated his junior and senior seasons on the mats and was never taken down.

We may never see another Carter Smith for another 50 to 100 years. At this point in time, it’s the greatest high school career in Mifflin County history. It’s a “wow.”