East Northumberland Secondary School had another successful cross-country running season, but it was quite unlike any athletes and coaches have encountered before.
Still, 12 athletes from the Brighton school competed at the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) provincial championships this past Saturday at Lakefield College School.
“We really had no expectations for the season at all because as of Sept. 22 we didn’t even have a venue to host any meets at,” said ENSS coach Anne Falla. “The OFSAA event wasn’t even planned until three weeks ago. There had been a host in Uxbridge and their board withdrew from that hosting responsibility and then Lakefield College School took over.”
ENSS is accustomed to hosting large running events, but this year proved to be a trying experience. Goodrich-Loomis Conservation Area, the regular cross-country venue, wasn’t available due to capacity limits. Falla ran into the same challenge with trying to book Presqu’ile Provincial Park and Ferris Provincial Park as well as potential Belleville sites.
Either capacity limits wouldn’t allow for competitions or in some cases timing just wasn’t their side.
That changed during an ENSS team practice at nearby Dunnett Orchards and conversation with owner Bob Dunnett.
“He’s driving around in his truck when we’re practising and stops to chat,” Falla said. “I was voicing my frustration about not being able to find a venue and I was just about to throw in the towel on the season and Bob said ‘why don’t you bring everybody here?’ We quickly engineered a cross-country course that as it turned out we really liked, but there was a lot of uncertainty. We weren’t sure we were going to have a competitive season at all.”
Falla is grateful for the generosity shown by Dunnett as she was able to convene a few meets at the Orchards, including the Bay of Quinte Invitational, Bay of Quinte championships and the Central Ontario Secondary School Athletics (COSSA) championships, which is the OFSAA qualifier.
“Anybody who made it to OFSAA this year, we considered that a bonus on the season,” Falla said.
“I can’t overstate how important Bob’s support was for all of COSSA. We had no other option for our meets and if we had not been able to hold our qualifying meet, 92 COSSA athletes would not have been able to attend OFSAA.”
Lakefield College School proved to be a great location for the provincial meet, especially the proximity for Northumberland area athletes, she added.
“Todd Harris headed up the committee at Lakefield College School and they did an amazing job,” Falla remarked. “A championship that would normally take a year to plan, they had to get it ready in three weeks. They have some beautiful ski trails on their campus that they used for the cross country trails and they made some modifications to their start area. It was just an amazing event.”
East Northumberland’s junior boys team placed 11th in the team standings with 383 points. Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School from Sudbury won the division with 85 points (8-18-28-31) as it had four runners in the top 31 while Toronto’s Upper Canada College was second with 119 (1-19-49-50) and Dundas Valley Secondary School was third with 137 (6-12-47-72).
David Jiang from UCC won the junior boys 5.2-kilometre race in 17 minutes 11.6 seconds.
ENSS was led by Aidan Molehuis with a 56th place finish out of 179 runners in a time of 19:41.7 followed by Carter Geens 85th (20:26), Dominic Noreau 92nd (20:50.4), Owen Turner 150th (25:18.6) and Logan Rivard 158th (26:41.5).
“They were really dedicated kids. The junior boys never missed a practice. I was especially impressed by the junior boys because they started high school in the worst possible scenario. They came to high school last year and had nothing. They had online classes and some in-person classes, but they had nothing in terms of extra-curriculars,” Falla said. “They ran fast times. Eleventh in Ontario is such a respectable result so we’re really proud of them.”
ENSS also had a team entered in the senior boys race, which featured 202 runners. Neil McNeil High School from Scarborough dominated with just 67 points (4-15-16-32) ahead of Georgetown’s Christ the King Catholic Secondary School with 168 (19-27-51-71) and Kingston’s Frontenac Secondary School with 195 (2-7-73-113).
Erik Unger from Peterborough’s Adam Scott Collegiate won the senior boys 6.1-kilometre race in 19:14.7.
Braden Geens, 101st (23:35.3), was the top runner for ENSS, followed close behind by Ethan Rivard in 103rd (23:39.3), Michael Patrick 105th (23:44.8), Owen Williams 124th (24:00.9) and Josh Warner 137th (24:23.1).
Falla said the senior boys team battled a number of injuries throughout the season.
“At OFSAA they ran the best they could on the day,” she said. “They finished 17th and senior boys is crazy competition so we’ll take it.”
ENSS had captured the senior boys COSSA title, despite being the only winning team there not to have a runner finish below the 10th place spot.
“It took a team effort,” Patrick said. “We had a lot of depth on our team, a lot of strong runners. We all had good races which helped and we were able to qualify in first place (at COSSA).”
They enjoyed the OFSAA experience.
“The meet was really well run and it ran really smoothly. We had an awesome experience,” Patrick said. “We were able to be first in line for getting all our souvenirs and everything. We all had good runs. At one point three of us were running together for half of the race.”
Two ENSS runners, Ethan Miklos and Braeden Lay, competed in the novice boys division at the OFSAA meet as individuals. At COSSA, the top two teams and five fastest individuals not on a qualifying team advanced to the provincial championships.
Dallas St. John from St. Michael’s College School in Toronto covered the 4.3-kilometre course in 15:04.2 to claim the novice boys title.
Miklos placed 58th out of 175 runners in a time of 16:48.1 and Lay was 101st in 17:49.8.
Falla was encouraged by the amount of Grade 9 boys and girls who joined the cross country team as it bodes well for the future and the OFSAA experience was a positive one for Miklos and Lay.
“They basically crossed the finish line and started asking me about their winter training programs,” Falla said. “They’re hooked and that’s really nice for the future for the team.”
As a coach, this season was like a regular one in terms of looking after the athlete, making sure they were training well and not getting injured. An added layer was helping them avoid getting sick, not to mention the venue issues.
Any second thoughts Falla had about whether there should be a cross country season or not evaporated when she worked with the athletes.
“As soon as you show up at practice and you see these kids that are really keen to get going, you have no choice but to keep doing the work for them,” she said. “It was a difficult season, but it was also really rewarding because we managed to have cross country for the first time in two years.”
