Posts tagged: Ontario Championship

Heading into last weekend’s Ontario U14/U16/U18 Championship Lions athletes held 13 individual provincial age class records. However, after Jorai Oppong-Nketiah stepped off the Western Alumni Stadium track following the 100 metres, the total had risen to 14.

In her first year of track and field competition at the club level, Jorai has made a big splash, and last weekend’s performance was just the latest on her list of summer success. 

With a silver medal from the provincial U20 championship last month, Jorai was certainly a favourite to take top spot in the U16 girls 100 metre event. She started off the competition on the right foot as she broke a 40 year old Club record for both U16 and U18 athletes with a time of 11.85 seconds. 

Unwilling to let her new record last as long as the previous one, Oppong-Nketiah trimmed another seven hundredths of a second off her best in the final. With a blazing time of 11.78 seconds, the soon-to-be grade 10 student was not only Ontario Champion, but she had also bested Makenzy Pierre-Webster’s seven year old provincial U16 record of 11.81 seconds. 

While Athletics Canada does not keep national records for the U16 age category, we have discovered that Jorai’s time is the second fastest ever recorded in Canada by a 15-year-old girl. The top time of 11.58 seconds belongs to Saskatchewan’s Jenni Hucul.

Oppong-Nketiah’s gold was 1 of 19 medals won by the Lions over the weekend – including 6 gold. 

Taking home half of those gold medals was Daniel Cova. The 16-year-old took top spot in each of the 2000 metre steeplechase and 3000 metres with a two second margin of victory in each race. Cova’s 3000 metre winning time of 8 minutes and 46.67 seconds is the ninth fastest in Club history in the U18 category. 

The Louis-Riel student also added a gold medal as part of the sprint medley relay. Running the anchor leg, Cova helped the team of Safwan El Mansari, Janssen Assogba,  and Ladi Ogunmekan set a new U18 Club record time of 3 minutes and 36.64 seconds. 

Rounding out his haul, Cova all garnered a bronze in the 1500 metres to bring his total to four.

Also pulling in multiple medals were Timeo Atonfo and Maxime Cazabon. Together the pair combined for a further seven medals.

Atonfo was a double bronze medalist in the horizontal jumps. The Gisele-Lalonde student produced jumps measuring 6.64 and 13.80 metres in the long jump and triple jump respectively. 

In addition to his jumping success, Atonfo was also a key member of the medal winning 4×100 and 4×400 metre teams. Running lead off in the 4×100 with Ladi Ogunmekan, Mukhtar Raji, and Janssen Assogba, Atonfo picked up a silver medal with a 43.99 second clocking. Teammed with Eric Zielonka, Jonah Gratton, and Ethan Lavictoire, Timeo picked up a second silver in the 4×400 metre relay.

Competing in his first Ontario Championship, Maxime Cazabon made a big splash as the 13-year-old won a full set of medals. He kicked things off with a silver in Friday night’s 300 metre final by running a Club U14 record of 39.29 seconds. Cazabon added a bronze in the 80 metres before ending with gold in the high jump following a 1.60 metre clearance.

Other medalists from the weekend include the following:

Bronze – Safwan El Mansari (U18 400m)
Silver – Atalia Williams (U14 80m)
Silver – Sofia Lefaivre,Maya Allibon,Kyre Lauter,Bianca Arabackyj (U16 4x800m)
Bronze – Charlie Mortimer,Luke Van Brabant,Yousef Kamel,Yusuf Elmasry (U16 4x800m)
Gold – Charlie Mortimer (U16 1500m Steeplechase)
Bronze – Eric Zielonka (U18 400m Hurdles)
Silver – Atalia Williams (U14 150m)

Complete results from the Championship can be found on our website.

For updated club rankings, please visit https://milesrowat.shinyapps.io/ottl_rankings/

The height of the season for many of our masters athletes took place this past weekend at the Ontario Masters Championships. Competing against the province’s best, Lions athletes managed to bring home an impressive 13 medals including a staggering 10 golds. 

A quartet of athletes managed to win a pair of gold medals on the weekend. 

Completing one of the more rare track doubles, Kimberley Howitt took top spot in both the 200 and 800 metre events. The 38-year old won the W35 800 in a time of 2:27.23 on Sunday before coming back later in the day to win the 200 in 29.96 seconds.

Joining Howitt as a double gold medalist on the track was Jodi Molstad. The 48-year-old Molstad found herself atop the podium in both the 200 and 400 metres events, winning in times of 31.31 and 1:14.12 respectively. Molstad fell just short of the sprinting trifecta as she took the silver over 100 metres in 14.62 seconds – just over a tenth of second back from the winner Mavis Ayippey of Jamcan International. 

In the field, Club founder Bob Stavely returned to his winning ways in both the shot put and javelin. Stavely, who was a pole vaulter in his younger years, has been a strong force in masters throwing over the past 20 plus years – particularly in the javelin, where he won the M85 competition Sunday with a throw of 15.85 metres. 

As a show of strength, the 88-year-old’s mark would have also been good enough to win the M80 category. 

Also picking up the throws double was Sam Walls, who completed the much more conventional shot put/discus double. The 48-year-old Walls heaved the 16 pound shot put out to 11.60 metres, besting the field by four and a half metres. In the discus, Walls nearly doubled the second place finisher with his 37.75 metre throw. 

The other two golds came over 800 metres where Michael Conway and Gilles Frenette took top spot in the M35 and M45 categories respectively. Conway’s time of 2:06.97 was nearly 22 seconds faster than second place, while Frenette’s 2:18.80 was good for a more than four second margin of victory. 

Danette Nearing-Guibord garnered silver medals in both the W60 100 and 200 metre events.

It was deja vu all over again for Lions coaches this past weekend as they witnessed another provincial title fall just out of their grasp as the Under-18 team placed second at the Ontario Championships despite garnering eight medals – including three gold.  Like it did for the senior athletes, the title was decided in the final event, the men’s 4×400 metre relay, with the Lions placing fourth and coming up two points shy of London Western’s winning total of 116 points. In the three provincial championships held so far this summer, the margin of victory has been two points or less.

The women’s 4×800 metre relay winning team of Louise Stoneham, Gillian Porter, Koree Yach, and Amelia Van Brabant combined for a massive 46 of the Lions 114 point total. The quartet finished five seconds clear of second place in a time of nine minutes and 46.21 seconds – good enough for fifth on the Club’s age group rankings. Individually, Stoneham and Porter took the top two spots in the 2000 metre steeplechase, both in personal best efforts, finishing in times of 7:21.78 and 7:29.90 respectively.

Stoneham picked up five more points with her fourth place finish in the 3000 metres as Van Brabant nabbed a silver in the second best performance of her life – 10:05.40. Van Brabant, who has seen significant improvements across all her events this summer also nabbed a new personal best at 1500 metres, 4:39.85, to pick up a fourth place finish at five more team points.

The other gold medal of the weekend came from Adriano Padoin-Castillo as he took top honours in the steeplechase. The Immaculata High School student trimmed more than half a minute off his previous best to cross the line in six minutes and 36.87 seconds – just a fraction of a second ahead of Laurel Creek’s Nathan Paul. Padoin-Castillo also ran the lead leg of the 4×800 metre relay that place fourth.

Other individual medals came from Thomas Kukla-Colby and Audrey Goddard, who each took home bronze. Kukla-Colby set a new best of 56.63 seconds over the 400 metre hurdles for his third place finish, while Goddard cleared 1.45 metres for third in the high jump.

The women’s 4×100 and 4×400 metre relay teams picked up the final two bronze’s of the weekend.

Click here for full results.

For the second time in two weeks, the Lions found themselves in a tight battle for the team title at the provincial championship. As is known to be the case, the team title was decided in the final event – the men’s 4×400 metre relay, where the Lions entered tied with Royal City Track Club from Guelph at 103 points. However. Royal City’s one second victory gave them the overall crown with the quartet of Luca Nicoletti, Leewinchell Jean, Fabrice Nonez, and David Moulongou grabbing silver – one of 12 medals for the Lions over the weekend.

The one of the most decorated athletes of the Championship was Alexandra Telford, who took home a total of three medals, including two gold. While earning relay medals in her teenage years, the 25-year-old took home her first individual provincial medal Saturday as she ran away with gold in the 400 metres. Running just off her personal best, Telford finished in 55.85 seconds, nearly a second ahead of silver. Teammate Helana Jovic also picked up a bronze in the race.

Telford would set a new lifetime best Sunday in the 400 metre hurdles, placing third in 1:00.35 to move to ninth on the Club’s all-time list. Jovic would finish three spots back in sixth with 1:02.50. The pair would teamed up with Doyin Ogunremi and Madison Clarke to take the gold in both the 4×400 metre relay.

Bianca Borgella also took home a trio of golds as she captured both the para ambulatory 100 and 400 metres. The latter in a new Canadian T13 record of 1:04.30. The 18-year-old just missed her Canadian record in the 100 metres with her 12.76 clocking. Borgella also helped anchor the 4×100 metre relay team of Vanessa Lu Langley, Doyin Ogunremi, and Kelly Brennan to gold in thee 4×100 metres.

Topping the podium in the 3000 metre steeplechase was Nicholas Pedersen who was making his debut at the distance. The 21-year-old had not run the steeplechase since placing sixth at the 2018 OFSAA Championships over the 2000 metre distance. Pedersen’s time of nine minutes and 44.80 seconds was more than a minute ahead of silver and moves him to 16th best in Club history.

Leewinchell Jean produced a lifetime best to take silver in the 400 metre hurdles. The University of Windsor student crossed the line in 52.86 seconds, dropping nine tenths of a second from his previous best set winning OFSAA gold in 2019.

Other medals from the weekend included a bronze from Stephen Evans in the 800 metres and gold from the 4×100 metre relay team of David Adeleye, Luca Nicoletti, David Moulongou, and Bertwin Ben-Smith.