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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
There is a rebellion planned for Nov. 4 in the nation’s capital, but this uprising has nothing to do with politics.
That’s the date the Louis-Riel Rebelles senior boys have marked down to take their best shot at winning their school’s first provincial high school cross-country running title when Ottawa hosts OFSAA XC at Mooney’s Bay.
With an impressive team score of 29 placement points at the city finals on Oct. 24 at Walter Baker Park in Kanata, Louis-Riel posted the largest margin of victory out of all six races. The 46-point victory came despite facing very strong entries from Glebe, Colonel By and Immaculata – all schools whose runners have won OFSAA team medals in recent years – and spurred big hopes for the big one.
“We’re trying to win OFSAA with the team,” underlined Rebelles lead runner Daniel Cova, noting that’s what his squad talked about before city finals, and all season long.
“We had one test to go, and now it’s just the last big push for our team,” highlighted the Grade 12 student-athlete. “It definitely makes my last year of high school really fun.”
The Louis-Riel lineup includes three members of the Ottawa Lions Track and Field Club, plus a Team Ontario/Nakkertok Nordic skier, and isn’t reliant on only its top-four to produce a solid point total.
Cova was the silver medallist at the city finals, while Mikel Fortier placed seventh, Evan James Rebane was eighth, Cohen Kaye was 12th and Olivier Young 14th in the field of 213 runners who completed the 6 km course.
Another classic chapter of the Cova vs Saul Taler showdown was written at the front of the race. Glebe’s Taler took the latest matchup between the friends/rivals by 18.5 seconds in 18 minutes, 28.3 seconds to even up their lifetime tally of national capital XC titles at two apiece.
“Usually Saul will take it at the end, so I tried to really take it early on, but he was matching every surge I could do,” Cova recounted. “He had a better race. I felt it at the end. I lost a couple steps to him, and then it’s kind of hard to run alone.
“But I’m happy. It was definitely a hard race and I put my all into it.”
Cova and Taler have alternated who occupies the top spot on the national capital podium every year of their high school careers. Cova said it’s always a toss-up on who will win since the Lions teammates are equal in fitness, and it comes down to whoever has the best performance on race day.
“That’s what’s nice about it. Sometimes it’s going to be me and sometimes it’s going to be him, but it’s always a good time,” smiled Taler. “With Ottawa Lions, every practice together, I’m pushing the pace, he’s pushing the pace. I’m just really grateful to have him as a training partner. We push each other to get better.
“And every race up front, it’s the same thing. I love it. Stiff competition, friendly competitiveness. It’s just great to have someone out there that you can compete with.”
Taler, who powered Glebe to its first-ever OFSAA senior boys’ team title last year, is eager to tackle the provincials again after placing seventh at OFSAA 2023 as a Grade 11 alongside several Grade 12 teammates.
“(City finals) was the first race where we put in a real hard effort and I’m really happy with it before OFSAA,” signalled the 2022 OFSAA junior boys’ champion. “It was a good chance to see where I’m at, and now I’m excited for November 4th. That’s the big show.”
Cova said that losing a race to Taler doesn’t eat at him.
“It’s fine,” he explained. “It definitely makes you want to work harder all the time. It definitely gives you a bit of motivation. At the end of the day, dedication is a better way of going with it (than being upset).”
Cova, who was 13th at OFSAA last year, is looking forward to the chance to compete in his final high school cross-country race in Ottawa.
“I know the course like the back of my hand, so it’s definitely going to be an advantage coming into it,” he noted. “Me and Saul practice there like three times a week. We see the course, we do our workouts on the course, so we definitely know when it’s time to push it and when we can slow down and recuperate ourselves.”
Gryphon senior boys grab Glebe’s 14th overall city title in a row by narrow margin
This year, the competition for second place in team event was not as crucial as it normally is in most races since the host association gets four OFSAA team entries instead of the two, but it meant a pile in the senior boys’ event.
That’s because the Glebe Gryphons’ quest for a 14th consecutive overall aggregate city crown was under grave threat from the Colonel By Cougars.
Glebe needed to finish ahead of Colonel By in the senior boys’ team event to keep the streak alive. Taler registered the lowest score possible with his victory, Russell Heins followed in fourth, and the next three Glebe runners all darted ahead of Colonel By’s fourth runner to gain the advantage they needed, winning 75-78.
Owen Whike (34th), Charlie Woolf (36th) and Jack Johnston (38th) earned the decisive points for Glebe.
“It’s just exciting,” Gryphons coach Kirk Dillabaugh indicated. “Colonel By, they beat us (at the east conference meet), so I was really worried about that. They pack really, really well. We’ve got Saul and Russell in the front, which they can’t match, but then we have a gap, so our back end had to run really, really well.”
Dillabaugh was proud of the total team effort, from top to bottom, that was responsible for the national capital crown. None of Glebe’s six teams won city titles, but every squad was within the top-5, and together scored enough points to top the point standings 35-32 over Colonel By.
“In the overall aggregate, every single race counts,” Dillabaugh underlined. “We were able to pick up points, a significant amount of points, in every single race.”
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.
The team bronze-medallist Cougars were led by Owen Siderius at the cities in fifth place, followed by Austin Walker (16th), William Ross (18th), Henry Taylor (39th) and Kiran Smith (57th).
Immaculata secured the final team berth with Noah Smith (sixth), Matteo Padoin-Castillo (20th), Sam Kardish (22nd), Sebastian Oleskevich (37th) and Adam Boruk (72nd).
With so many athletes on strong teams occupying many of the top positions, the 23rd-place finisher was able to secure an individual OFSAA berth.
They probably didn’t know it in the moment, but when Earl of March’s Dean Kontogiannis and Sacred Heart’s Jamie Charlebois were separated at the finish by a hair (.1 seconds according to the clock), that was the dividing line between racing at provincials and a day in class.
Bronze medallist Charlie Mortimer of Hillcrest took the top individual berth, alongside John McCrae’s Jackson McKercher (ninth), Lisgar’s Conlin Burnett (10th), St. Mother Teresa’s Brennan Lee (11th), Gisèle-Lalonde’s Adem Walid Chelghoum (13th), Sir Robert Borden’s Barrett Goold (15th), Ashbury’s Nicholas Johnston-Zemek (17th), Nepean’s Robin Daniels (19th), Lisgar’s Olivier Thibault (21st) and Kontogiannis.
The Ottawa Sports Pages has posted 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 Senior Boys’ Photo Gallery
Photos by Zach Sikka, sikkasnapshots.com
