Lions Golden At OFSAA

It was a banner weekend at the OFSAA Cross Country Championships this past Saturday as three Lions athletes brought home individual medals, highlighted by two gold. In addition, multiple team medals were earned including the Girls Overall Championship by Glebe Collegiate, led by Lions coach Kirk Dillabaugh.

The Lions first medal came in the first race of the day, the midget girls 2.85km race, as Shona McColloch of Longfields Davidson SS narrowly claimed gold in her first OFSAA championship as both she and second place finisher, Kylee Raftis of Bishop Strachan in Toronto finished in identical times of 10:24. In the same race, Keili Shepherd finished 9^th overall to lead her Glebe Collegiate team to a silver medal performance.

Also claiming individual gold was Owen Day of Holy Trinity, who improved on his silver medal from just one year ago. Day laid down a dominating performance, placing 20 seconds between himself and his closest competitor, Edward Hayfron of Birchmount Collegiate over the 5.85km course.

The Lions’ final individual medal came from Claire Smith in senior girls event, as she completed the 5.21km course in 19:05, nine seconds behind winner Charlotte Prouse of London Central. Finishing closely behind Smith was training partner Olivia Robertson who crossed the finish line in 19:37 to finish 5^th.

In the senior boys category, Farah Abdulkarim of Gloucester was the club’s top runner, placing sixth overall. Abdulkarim had finished 60^th in last year’s senior boys race.

In addition to the individual accolades, Lions athletes also had plenty of success in the team competitions. In the senior girls category, Canadian youth silver medalist over 400m and 800m Erinn Stenman-Fahey, along with Lia Codrington and Sydney Currier helped lead Canterbury to a bronze medal with 253 points. Glebe Collegiate, with Claire Smith, Alex Livingstone and Natasha Wong were right behind with 259 points to finish fourth. The senior girls performance, combined with the fourth place finish of Glebe’s junior girls and aforementioned silver in the midget category, helped secure to the overall girls title for Glebe, the first in quite some time for an Ottawa area school.