12 more medals for Lions on final two days of OFSAA Championship

As another OFSAA Championship came and went this weekend, one thing that could be said about the performance Lions athletes is – they are really good at running over hurdles. The finally medal tally for the Club was 13 medals, including 6 gold. All but four of those medals came in an event with barriers.
The duo of Kevin Robertson and Will Cox were the first to rise above the barriers as they went 1-3 in the open boys 2000 metre steeplechase. Robertson dominated the event almost from the gun as he methodically put metres between him and the field lap after lap. The culmination was a nearly 50 metre margin of victory from the grade 12 Bell runner as his winning time of 5:47.55 was the fastest since 2016. Training partner Will Cox of Colonel By took the bronze in a personal best 5:56.97. Robertson nearly managed a second medal in the senior boys 3000 metres, falling a half second short of bronze as he was fourth in 8:36.37.
Luca Nicoletti entered this year’s OFSAA Championship with a strong resume that included two meet records over the 100 and 300 metre hurdles at the previous week’s regional championships. The grade 9 student at Paul Desmarais followed that up gold in the sprint event and silver in the intermediate hurdles. Nicolletti narrowly took the crown in the 100 metre hurdles in 13.69 seconds as he smashed hurdles seven and nine fairly hard, but still managed to finished a hundredth of a second ahead of second place. He followed that up the next day with a massive personal best of 39.47 seconds over the 300 metre hurdles. The time bettered the previous OFSAA record, but so did Ryder King who took the event in 39.24 seconds. Rounding out the podium was Nicoletti’s training partner Andile Mabaleka who won bronze in a personal best 41.28 seconds.
The success in the midget boys intermediate hurdles was just the tip of the iceberg for the Lions in the event as Leewinchel Jean, Helena Jovic and Keito Newman also brought home some hardware. Jean and Jovic swept the senior 400 metre hurdle events in very different fashion. Jean, a grade 12 student at Giselle Lalonde, was the class of his field as his personal best time of 52.95 illustrates. The mark is the top performance by a Canadian under the age of 20 this year and will qualify him Jean to represent Canada at this summer’s Pan American U20 Championships in Costa Rica. He will be joined by Jovic, who’s never give up attitude was rewarded with a gold medal and massive personal best as she cracked the 60 second barrier for the first time ever. The John McRae student came off hurdle 10 a few steps back of Sandwich Secondary’s Karlie Moore and was able to find the narrowest of openings to pass Moore in the final centimetres of the race. Newman, who narrowly missed out on a spot in Friday’s 100m hurdle final, found some retribution over the 300 metre race. The Glebe student ran a significant personal best time of 39.59 seconds to place second to Mark Skerl of Cardinal Newman.
Rounding out the medals on the track was Mattson Strickler as she took silver in the junior girls 400 metres. The St. Joesph’s student ran back to back personal bests in the heats and finals culminating in a fantastic time of 56.38 seconds. In all, Strickler took a massive two and a half seconds off her personal best from East Regionals the week before.
In the field, St. Peter’s Vienna Courteau also jumped on the “PB train” as she popped off a lifetime best leap of 5.36 metres in the fourth round to claim gold in the junior girls long jump. To show it was no fluke, she leapt to 5.30 metres in round five and looked to go even further in the sixth and final round, but fell victim to a narrow foot fault. However, the field was not able to retaliate and Courteau was rewarded with her first OFSAA Championship.
The final two medals came from shot putters Brandon Ovington and Brianna Asiamah. Ovington, a student at West Carleton Secondary School used some last round heroics to capture silver in the senior boy’s event. Sitting in third heading into the final round with a best of 16.86 metres, Ovington unleashed a bomb of a throw that touched down at 18.20 metres to secure the silver. The throw was the farthest by a Lion athlete since the 2000 OFSAA Championships when Brian MacPhee also picked up a silver medal with a throw of 18.35 metres. Asiamah also unleashed a sixth round personal best to secure her medal. The Holy Trinity student cracked the 12 metre barrier for the first time with her 12.09 metre throw to finish third.
For complete Lions results from OFSAA, please consult the list below: