By Dan Plouffe
If you think the Glebe Gryphons’ tradition of dominance in Ottawa high school cross-country running will come under threat once long-time coach Kirk Dillabaugh retires at the end of this semester, you may want to take a little look at the runners already coming up the pipeline for the navy and gold.
The Gryphons novice girls kept up the school’s winning ways at the national capital high school cross-country running championships on Oct. 28 at Mooney’s, taking top prize by a whopping 52 placement points thanks to a solid team effort by Yuiko Hurst (who finished in sixth place), Anniek Winkel (11th), Hazel Pritchard (12th) and Kate Spicer (13th).
Had final OFSAA team qualifier Margaret McCabe (17th) been able to lead another Glebe team entry with their fifth through eighth-ranked runners, that theoretical second team would have also earned a podium placement in third.
“We were kind of expecting (to win), so we’re happy that we were able to accomplish it,” signals lead runner Hurst, who knew of Glebe’s great XC tradition before she arrived at her new school from Glashan intermediate.
“At the end of Grade 8, I was definitely getting excited to be on the team,” she indicates.
The team atmosphere that’s fuelled the success of the Glebe program – the winners of 16 consecutive overall national capital titles – is burning strong with this newest generation of galloping Gryphons. Two months into high school, the Grade 9 runners’ friendships and shared love of sport are already firmly enshrined.
“We’re really like family. It’s really, really fun to be together,” Hurst highlights. “We’re all athletic, and we train as a team almost every single day. We’re just so good together.”
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John McCrae runner Quinten Lepp also entered her debut XC city championships thinking that victory could be hers.
The successful Ottawa Lions Track and Field Club athlete likes to get out fairly hard to try to create a gap between herself and the field, and her strategy proved to be perfect as she recorded the largest margin of victory in the shortest of the six city final races, covering the four-kilometre course in 15:14.6 to win by 22.5 seconds.
“It’s definitely very stressful going into it and having expectations to win,” Lepp reflects. “But as soon as it started, I felt good, and there was someone right on me at the start, so I knew that if I wanted to win, I had to push. It turned out to be a good race.”
Lepp, who won a Grade 9/10 2,000 m race at the Canadian Track and Field League Trials a couple days after finishing middle school this summer, has been running since she was young, and she just adores it.
“I really liked long distance runs, and as soon as I started, I was one of the fastest where I lived, in Texas,” she recounts. “It was just something I fell in love with really quickly.”
Lepp was born in Canada, then moved to the U.S. for her mom’s job, and has now been back in Ottawa for four years. It was a chilly day for the national capital finals, certainly by Texas standards, but she wasn’t about to complain.
“I was pretty numb, so it didn’t hurt as much,” Lepp laughs. “That was good at least.”
She’s now feeling “really excited” to experience her first OFSAA provincial high school championships on Nov. 9 in Sudbury, although she says she may bring along another layer to go under her singlet.
The five individual OFSAA qualifying positions went to the top-five finishers in the novice girls’ event. In order of finish, they are Lepp, Franco-Ouest’s Sofia Benardi Rivard, Samuel-Genest’s Sinead Gomes, West Carleton’s Indiana Brown and St. Peter’s Ryann Dill.
Joining Glebe as the national capital’s team representatives are the Nepean lineup of Edie Stutt (who placed 16th), Mariam Khalil (22nd), Kona Renfroe (26th), Jordyn Einarson (30th) and #5 runner Keira MacDonald.
