Thank you very much to Ottawa Orienteering for presenting the Ottawa Sports Pages’ XC Week! Orienteering is like cross-country running, with a few extra exciting twists and turns. Find out about the adventure that awaits you here.
By Dan Plouffe
Despite being on the shortest course in the novice girls’ 4 km event, John McCrae’s Alexandra Harris posted the largest winning margin across the six novice, junior and senior girls’ and boys’ races at the national capital high school cross-country running championships on Oct. 24.
By the time Harris was done running around the soccer pitches at Walter Baker Park in Kanata, the Grade 9 Bulldog was more than a football field ahead of her nearest challenger, and her lead grew further once she flew past the ponds, up and down the toboggan hill and back around to the finish line.
Harris clocked in with a winning time of 16:18.9, which was 44.4 seconds ahead of St-Laurent Academy’s Lila Gauthier in second place, and 47.3 better than Glebe’s Reve McInnes in third.
“Honestly, I was surprised” to win by such a sizeable amount, Harris reflected. “We were close throughout a lot of the race, so I thought it was going to be close the whole time. Lila’s really, really good and she kept pushing me. I just kind of kept going, looking forward.”
Harris started running cross-country all the way back in Grade 2. She was an Ottawa Lions Track and Field Club member until COVID interrupted her running rhythm, but she’s recently rejoined the club.
The happy harrier was enthusiastically greeted by her parents and her teammates at the finish after her victory.
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“They were so supportive,” Harris highlighted. “It’s amazing. At the end of the race, you’ve raced so hard, you’re so tired, and just to have their support makes the pain worth it.”
Cougars make the most of their tiny team
Racing with the minimum four runners to record a team score, the Colonel By Cougars won the novice girls’ team crown as all four finished within one minute and 16 seconds of each other.
Kira Coldrey placed fifth in 17:36.8, Matilda Edwards was seventh, Audrey McFarland was 12th and Julie Cabasson was 21st in the field of 109.
“I was honestly so proud of my team,” signalled Coldrey. “To feel like we’ve done this as a team was such a great experience.”
Coldrey said that her group’s goal heading into the event was to qualify for OFSAA, and that a city crown wasn’t really a focus of theirs.
“To be city champions is such an insane thing to say,” she smiled. “I never would have thought at the start of the school year that we would have come out as city champions.”
The Cougars finished four points behind Glebe at last week’s east conference championships, but flipped the table and won the cities by the same four-point margin.
“As a team, we were all like, ‘We have to do better than the last time,'” recounted Coldrey. “That definitely made me push hard, because it’s not just for me, it’s for my whole team.
“That we’re going to go to OFSAA together as a team is a big important thing for me. We’ve all been showing up at practices for the last few months, and it’s been really fun to work with these girls.”
Like most of the leading novice girls, Coldrey is a Lions club athlete, and she’s thoroughly enjoying her journey in athletics.
“I love pushing myself,” she indicated. “After a loss, I usually just take it as you need to work harder, and that’s how I’ve just gotten to progress over the year.
“And it’s not always just about winning. The people I do it with are such great people, and everyone’s so supportive. No matter what place you get, everyone’s just cheering you on the sides.
“And it’s just so fun to run. You feel so accomplished after. Everything in this sport, I’ve loved my whole life.”
A slight exception to that rule would be Mount Mooney, which proved to be a formidable foe when Coldrey tackled it at the Gryphon Open OFSAA preview meet. But she’s eager to rise to the challenge when Ottawa hosts the provincials on Nov. 4 at Mooney’s Bay.
“I’m so excited to go to OFSAA,” Coldrey underlined. “The hill has definitely been something that we have to overcome. I’ve been trying to improve, and hopefully I can get my time down so that our team can show really well.”
As OFSAA hosts, the national capital association receives twice as many entries as it would for an away championships. The four schools with the lowest team score in each division (calculated by adding their top 4 runners’ placings) at the city finals qualified five runners each, while the 10 best individuals who didn’t qualify with their teams secured their place on the provincial start line as well.
Glebe placed second in the team event, with McInnes in third, Eve Steffler in 11th, Leonie Ravard in 16th, Stella Vickers in 19th and Camille Cuylits in 31st.
The Nepean team of Charlie Fee (fourth), Charlotte Eccles (15th), Avery Vlad (22nd), Helena Winkel (23rd) and Megan Stewart (27th) was third.
And Sir Robert Borden’s Holly Smith (20th), Emmerson Markwick (26th), Jaycee Lee (32nd), Mia Lloyd (56th) and Audrey Stynes (63rd) edged John McCrae by three points for the fourth and final team ticket.
Joining Harris as individual qualifiers are Gauthier, St. Francis-Xavier’s Aaliyah Boudreau (sixth), Lisgar’s Chloe Thibault (eighth), De La Salle’s Alyssa Nash (ninth), St. Pius’ Morgan Popowych (10th), Garneau’s Sophia Tsang (13th), St. Mark’s Avery Shuhla (14th), Pierre-Savard’s Mia Lentini (17th) and Cairine Wilson’s Jamie Preston (18th).
The Ottawa Sports Pages will be posting recaps and photo galleries race-by-race each weekday from Oct. 25-Nov. 1 leading into the 2024 OFSAA XC Championships. Find them all on our XC Week webpage, presented by Ottawa Orienteering.
NCXC24 Novice Girls’ Photo Gallery
Photos by Zach Sikka, sikkasnapshots.com
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