By Anne Duggan
Set on the University of Waterloo campus and amid a plethora of puddles brought by recent rains, a tsunami going by the name of Glebe Collegiate Institute overtook the OFSAA Cross-Country Running Championships on Nov. 1.
All five of Glebe’s team entries brought home medals – junior and senior boys’ bronze, midget and junior girls’ silver, and senior girls’ gold, en route to an overwhelming girls’ aggregate title, a narrow runner-up finish in the overall boys’ standings, and a very comfortable grand aggregate crown as the top XC school in the province.
“Things are cyclical,” explains Glebe Gryphons coach Kirk Dillabaugh, who came home with the best results in his 14 years of coaching. “We are obviously on a wave. It is a lot of fun, and we want to ride it as long as we can.”
The Gryphons posted the lowest team score in the senior girls’ event since 1973, with a 68-point total to win by a massive margin of 207 placement points over the next-best quartet of runners.
“The biggest story by far is our senior girls,” underlines Dillabaugh, coach of the lone sub-100 point team in the six OFSAA races. “With four runners in the top 36 places you know you are going to do really well.”
Coming off an early-season injury, 2013 OFSAA silver medalist Claire Smith led the team in 6th place, followed by Katherine Marshall in 8th, Alexa Livingstone in 18th and Natasha Wong in 36th.
“It was amazing,” recounts Smith, who also celebrated team gold last year. “The first time we won (the team competition), we were happy. This time we knew it would be tough. We knew there were a lot of strong teams, so it was a really good surprise to do so well.”
The Glebe midget girls narrowly missed a provincial title by four points (156 to 152). Mei Mei Weston won the individual bronze medal, followed closely by teammate Beth Rhead in 5th, while Kailey Young and Mzia Lee Pottie also helped towards the team silver. The school’s large team and supporters who made the trip down played a big role in the success, indicates Weston.
“My parents and my dog and my friend Lauren were all there,” highlights the provincial-level Ottawa South United soccer player. “Definitely the more people to cheer you on the better. No cheers means I might slow down because no one is really pushing me.”
The Glebe junior boys’ team had one main goal for OFSAA this year: don’t get sick. The entire team was wiped out by colds prior to last year’s championships, but they suffered no ill effects this time around. National capital bronze medalist Teagan Harris led the way in 8th place, while Finn Perreault, Pierre Grall-Johnson and Ryan Salvino helped pave the way to bronze.
The Glebe senior boys’ team of Alex Bernst, Farah Abdulkarim, Darion Dillabaugh and Jake Weston followed suit to match their junior counterparts’ bronze.
Louis-Riel’s Jonathan Rioux cracked the top-10 in the midget boys’ race, placing 9th.
Repeat gold for unbeaten OFSAA runner
After winning a sprint to the finish in her OFSAA XC debut last season, Longfields-Davidson Heights’ Shona McCulloch decided to establish her lead much earlier than the final hundredths of a second this time around, winning the 4 km event by 4.6 seconds.
“Shona won the junior girls’ race about a mile into it,” reports Dillabaugh, McCulloch’s coach with the Ottawa Lions Track-and-Field Club. “She was the favourite going in and a little nervous. Then she found herself alone for most of the race.”
The XC competition was McCulloch’s first of two OFSAA appearances in the span of a week. The former OSU player painstakingly decided recently to leave competitive soccer behind in favour of a focus on running, but when the chance came to pick up a field hockey stick at school, she couldn’t resist.
“It’s so much fun. I love it,” signals McCulloch, whose Ravens squad won their first city championship over Ashbury on Oct. 30 before bowing out in the preliminary round at the Nov. 6-8 OFSAA event in Burlington. “I like to be a busy person, and I like training. I love being a part of the team.”
Of course, Glebe also left with some hardware from the junior girls’ event. Silver medalists Keili Shepherd, Kendall Saravamutto, Anna Larkin and Cassidy Grimes were the best four for an exceptionally deep team that would have qualified for OFSAA even without its first six runners at the national capital finals.
Big numbers is a key ingredient to Glebe’s championship formula, Dillabaugh emphasizes.
“I handed out 85 forms at the first meeting this year and 78 students ended up running,” he details. “I try to encourage the kids to spread the word. It is so much more successful to have a friend ask a buddy to come out.”
It’s an approach that’s certainly caught on.
“I guess cross-country is cool at our school,” smiles Smith, also an OFSAA track-and-field champion. “Every year it’s been growing and growing. Mr. Dillabaugh is a big part because he’s such a good coach, and our school is pretty active school.”