Sunday, November 2, 2014

2014 OFSAA Report

Glebe Collegiate completed it's outstanding season with unprecedented success at the OFSAA Cross Country Running Championships in Waterloo.  Glebe won the Girls Overall Title for the third consecutive year and missed the Boys Overall Title by a mere 2 points, placing second overall.

The Glebe girls kicked off the day with a nail-bitter in the Midget Girls race.  Mei Mei Weston and Beth Rhead placed 3rd and 5th respectively making for a very tight battle with Windsor's Vincent Massey.  Massey used a strong team effort, placing all 4 girls within 31 seconds of each other to eke out a 152-156 victory over Glebe.  The Junior Girls race saw a repeat performance from 2013 as Lawrence Park repeated as Champions defeating the Gryphon girl's by 27 points (146-173).  Individually, Shona McCulloch (Longfields-Davidson Heights) defended her title from a year ago running to a comfortable 5 second victory, easily pulling away over the last 300m for the win.

The Senior Girl's race saw the most dominant performance by any team at OFSAA this season.  In fact, the Glebe Senior Girls scored the lowest winning team score of any Senior Girl's team since 1973 as they posted a meager 68 points.  The win provided for not only the largest margin of victory for the day, but the largest margin of victory ever at an OFSAA Championship as they beat runner up Westdale of Hamilton by 207 points (68-275).  Claire Smith led the team with a 6th place finish, followed by teammates Katherine Marshall (8th), Alexa Livingstone (18th) and Natasha Wong (36th).

Ashbury and Nepean contnued their tight battle in the Midget Boys division.  Only 17 points separated the teams at the NC meet, and they placed side by side (18th-19th) separated by only 29 points down in Waterloo.

The biggest surprise of the day came from the Glebe Junior Boys.  Fourteenth last year as  a Midget Boys team, the Glebe boys were bolstered by the addition of Teegan Harris (who placed 37th last year in the Junior race) and Finn Perreault, to vault the Gryphons onto the podium with a third place finish.  Harris lead the charge, placing 8th overall with Perreault 58th.  Teammate Grall-Johnson, who took a medicine ball to the head in a training accident earlier in the week and was doubtful as late as Thursday made the trip and helped secure the podium finish, placing 63rd.  Finally, not to be shown up by their younger teammates, the Glebe Senior Boys repeated the task with a bronze medal winning performance in their race, as Eastern Ontario teams dominated the competition.  Valour (Petawawa) prevailed in a very tight battle with Kingston Collegiate (147-152).

Top NC Teams and finishers were:

Para Race
Jayanetti (Woodroffe) - 9th
Qwider (Woodroffe) - 10th

Midget Girls
Glebe - Silver (156 points)
Mei Mei Weston (Glebe)- Bronze
Beth Rhead (Glebe) - 5th
Emily Gibson (West Carleton) - 18th

Junior Girls
Glebe - Silver (173)
Shona McCulloch (Longfields-Davidson) - Gold
Samantha Dickson (Earl or March) - 12th
Keili Shepherd (Glebe) - 19th

Senior Girls
Glebe - Gold (68 points)
Claire Smith (Glebe) - 6th
Katherine Marshall (Glebe) - 8th
Alexa Livingstone (Glebe) - 18th

Midget Boys
Ashbury - 18th (506)
Jonathan Rioux (Louis Riel) - 9th
Hugh Graham (Ashbury) - 18th
Andrew Hayman (West Carleton) - 26th

Junior Boys
Glebe - Bronze (225)
Teagan Harris (Glebe) - 8th
Reilly McCann (Franco-Cite) - 15th
Michael Mather (Franco-Ouest) - 19th

Senior Boys
Glebe - Bronze (206)
Alex Bernst (Glebe) - 11th
Owen Day (Holy Trinity) - 16th
Cameron Caughey (Bell) - 29th

NC Blogger would like to once again thank everyone for a truly outstanding season and wish you all the best doing whatever it is you do when it's not the best time of the year - Cross Country Season!! Til' next year!

Full results available at Trackie.ca