71 Lions Qualify for OFSAA Track and Field Championships

When the Ontario high school track and field championships begin Thursday at the Terry Fox Athletic Facility, 71 Lions will be in action representing their respective high school teams in individual events and relays. 

Athletes qualified for the championship by virtue of finishing among the top four in their respective event at last week’s East Regional High School Championships. 

Lions athletes captured an impressive 71 medals in individual events and added a further 10 in the relays. 

Topping the medal haul was Louis-Riel’s Zachary Jeggo who won a trio of gold medals, a bronze, and even broke a pair of meet records. The grade 10 student dominated the junior boys 400 metre field, winning in 50.17 seconds – more than two seconds clear of second place. The performance also bested Mike Robertson’s 18-year-old record of 50.39.

Jeggo’s other record came as a member of Louis-Riel’s junior boys 4×100 metre relay. The Rebels got the stick around Terry Fox in 44.86 seconds to take 0.22 seconds off the previous standard set by Thousand Islands Secondary School. 

The final gold for Jeggo came in the 300 metre hurdles, where he won handily in 39.80 seconds. For good measure, he also added a bronze in the 200 metres.

Gisele-Lalonde’s Timeo Atonfo and Opeongo’s Quinn Coughlin were the only two athletes to take home a trio of individual golds. Both athletes also broke meet records along the way. 

Atonfo twice broke the meet record in the junior boys 100 metre hurdles. In the heats he crossed the line in 13.90 seconds to trim a hundredth of a second off the previous best before bettering that effort in the final with a winning run of 13.76 seconds. 

In the field, Atonfo swept the horizontal jumps with efforts of 6.48 and 13.57 metres respectively in the long and triple jump.

For Coughlin, she easily disposed of Sarah Jackson’s nine year old junior girls 300 metre hurdle record. The Opeongo student’s time of 44.32 seconds took nearly three tenths off the former Lion’s mark, and left her more than three seconds clear of the rest of the field in Thursday’s race.

Coming back on Friday, Coughlin pulled off a difficult 400/800 double within a matter of a few hours. Over 800 metres, Quinn used her 400 speed to run away from the field on the second of the lap to win in 2 minutes and 21.48 seconds. 

The one lap race saw Coughlin jet out of the blocks, making up the stagger on the full field well within the first 200 metres. Pushing right through to the finish, she finished more than two seconds clear of the field, producing a winning time of 57.95 seconds. 

Finally, Arnprior’s Koree Yach may be the busiest woman of the OFSAA Championships. The grade 11 student qualified for the provincial meet in no less than five events at Regionals. A winner of the senior girls 400 metre hurdles, Yach also helped Arnprior to a bronze in the open girls 4×400 metre relay. She also added a trio of fourth place finishes in the 400 and 800 metres as well as the senior girls 4×100 metres. 

Bellow is a list of Lions qualifiers for OFSAA:

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