Sports

ODDS cross country team claims CWOSSA championship for second year

November 9, 2023   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

The Orangeville District Secondary School Scarlet Bears cross country team had a stellar performance at the Central Western Ontario Secondary Schools Association (CWOSSA) championship meet and finished as the overall winning team.

It was the second year in a row that ODSS finished first at CWOSSA.

The meet was held at Greens at Renton Golf Course in Simcoe, Ont., on Thursday, Oct. 26.

Notable performances by ODSS athletes include Ashwood Murray’s fifth-place finish in the Novice Boys division.

In the Junior Girls division, Ailsa Bogan-Raanderaad finished in 7th place, followed closely by Keira Phillip in 8th place.

The Senior boys brought home the gold medal with the highest team score of the day.

The top ODSS finishers were Logan Wilcott, who finished 7th and Craig Stevenson, who finished 8th.

Ailsa Bogan-Raanderaad said there were 141 other runners in her division that started the 5k junior race.

“It’s really busy, and I always like to look out for other people I know and try to match them and get into a good spot,” Ailsa said. “I like to start in the middle, if you can get there. The first minute was a little tough, then you settle in. At the end, everyone else starts to go faster and you have to pick up the pace and match them. CWOSSA was definitely my toughest race, it was really tiring. I think our team will do really well at OFSAA.”

Logan Wilcott ran the 6 km senior division race.

“It was a fast start,” Logan explained. “My strategy was to get out fast, but not too fast, then settle in. They were all good runners,” he said of the rest of the pack. “I just pushed through to the end and focused on finishing. I felt great, I had people yelling at me, coaches, friends, I was at sixth or seventh halfway through. I usually run 50 or 60 kilometres a week, (in training). We did some hill workouts and we will be doing some hill starts to prepare for OFSAA.”

At OFSAA, the course will include a trail that runs up a ski hill.

In the Novice boys division, Ashwood Murray finished his CWOSSA race in 5th place.

“It was a good race. It was my first race with spikes and that really helped,” Ashwood said of race. “I got a pretty good start. In this race I felt pretty good. At the halfway mark I could start to feel the pressure. Towards the end of the race I had to pick it up because I was in 6th and I had to sprint to catch the guy in fifth place.”

Eighteen ODSS athletes qualified to compete at the provincial level at OFSAA. This year, OFSAA will take place at Centennial Park in Etobicoke. Part of the course will take the runners up the front of the ski hill in the park, which will really determine which competitors are in the best shape to make that climb.

“It was a good day,” said ODSS cross country coach Rob Berg. “We are defending CWOSSA champions and we defended that title.”

CWOSSA competition was scheduled to take place on Saturday, Nov. 4, in Etobicoke.

Readers Comments (0)