By Dan Plouffe
If you were to pick the most important runner in a field of 136 competitors, you probably wouldn’t guess it’s the one who came in 46th place.
But therein lies the beauty of the team event in cross-country running, and there was no battle more fierce for the top spot on the team podium than the junior girls’ race at the national capital high school championships on Oct. 24 at Walter Baker Park in Kanata.
All three of the team medallists finished within one placement point of each other, with Glebe scoring 92 to take third and Garneau and Colonel By tying for first at 91.
In cross-country running, the tiebreaker goes to the team with the higher-placed fourth runner. So please meet Maeva Monrose: the hero of the day for the newly-minted city-champion Garneau Gaulois.
The Grade 10 student had no idea how close the team standings would be, but she figured Garneau was likely destined for third place, which was her team’s result last year in the novice class.
Monrose has loved running since she first got into the sport, and the city final meet was certainly a continuation of that joy. She said the course felt shorter than she thought it would, which helped propel her to a strong finishing segment of the 5 km race, which she covered in a time of 26 minutes, 9 seconds.
“I remember near the finish, my coach was cheering,” Monrose recounted. “She was telling me, ‘Go faster, go faster, go faster,’ and then I went faster, and then I sprinted because I thought someone was next to me.”
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The phantom runner Monrose thought she saw turned out to be a favourable illusion, as she safely beat the next athlete by 2.8 seconds to score what proved to be the deciding point to give her team the title.
“It was, for sure, a lot of stress” knowing she was the squad’s key fourth runner, Monrose indicated. “We really wanted to go to OFSAA last year, but we didn’t. Now we’re the first-place team, and I’m really excited.”
Monrose added that a major reason behind the Gaulois’s success is team spirit.
“Every second, we’re cheering each other on,” she underlined. “And I think it really starts with our coaches. They’re always cheering us on.”
Joining Monrose as city champions were Mya Sorg (who placed eighth), Catherine Dupuis (12th), Skye Sigman (25th) and Évangeline Gauvin (67th).
The Garneau novice boys also earned a city crown by almost as narrow a margin at the national capital championships, winning their team event by one point.
Race winner Leila Lebel feeling confident for home-course OFSAA
The Colonel By Cougars were powered by individual race winner Laila Lebel, along with Jade Amberg (ninth), Olivia Gardiner (29th), Rosie Lee (52nd) and Aany Vital Ramos (87th), while Glebe’s lineup featured Avery Wojtyk (14th), Livia Buffone (23rd), Abby Ludlow (27th), Leila Abaskharoun (28th) and Addy Hartell (33rd).
Lebel ran to a comfortable 8.6-second victory in 20:56.5, ahead of The Element’s Riley Daniels and Pierre-Savard’s Dahlia Loreti in the second- and third-place podium positions.
“It went very well,” signalled Lebel, who was motivated to post a low score at the front for her Cougars. “All my teammates are really strong.”
The Ottawa Lions Track and Field Club athlete is looking forward to racing on her club’s home course for OFSAA on Nov. 4 at Mooney’s Bay, and also the club XC races on her calendar later this fall.
“I think I’m gonna have a good race,” Lebel, who finished 12th as a novice girl at OFSAA XC 2023, said of the upcoming high school provincials. “I’ve been racing on that course for a really long time. It should be a little bit of an advantage.”
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 spot on the provincial start line as well.
On top of silver-medallist Daniels and bronze-medallist Loreti, the other athletes earning individual berths were De La Salle’s Bianca Arabackyj (fourth), Franco-Ouest’s Myla Carleton (fifth), St. Pius’ Sofia Cesario (sixth), Lisgar’s Ella Chernoff (seventh), Hillcrest’s Emily Munro (11th), John McCrae’s Talia LeBlanc (13th), and the South Carleton pair of Brynn Blackadder and Josefine van der Meulen, who followed one another in 15th and 16th.
Earl of March earned the fourth team qualification position with the four-runner lineup of Abbie Begbie (10th), Isabelle Downey (24th), Emma Snider (37th) and Alia Spielman (49th).
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 Junior Girls’ Photo Gallery
Photos by Zach Sikka, sikkasnapshots.com
