The St. Paul Athletics Association (SPAA) held its annual cross country running event at Westcove Park last week, with St. Paul Regional High School, Ecole Mallaig School and Racette Junior High School taking home this year’s banners.
The weather was ideal for the event on Sept. 26, and with the sun shining, hundreds of students laced up their running shoes to compete.
St. Paul Regional coach Hank Smid says he was impressed by his students’ performance at the event last week. In recent years, Mallaig has taken the high school boys banner, but this year, the two schools split the banner.
Regional also won the senior high girls banner this year.
Smid says he went into the race expecting some good results from some key athletes. There were a number of Regional students whose hard work training paid off when they received medals for top finishes.
The school has about 28 students who will be taking part in zones on Oct. 11 in Cold Lake, and Smid hopes to see a number of students move on to provincials in Red Deer on Oct. 20.
He says to be successful at zones and provincials, schools have to bring a number of athletes to compete. The students will also have to adjust themselves to some possibly cooler and wetter conditions in October.
For junior high, it would be Racette that would take home the boys banner, with Mallaig School taking home the junior girls banner.
“I knew we had a strong team going in,” says Gilles Gervais, the cross country running coach at Racette. He was especially impressed by the younger runners. Although Grade 6 students can’t receive a qualifying time at the event, they can run and gain valuable experience, says Gervais, and some of those Grade 6 students finished in the top 10.
“It’s looking promising,” says Gervais of the future of the cross country running program at Racette.
A number of course records were also broken at last week’s event, including the junior high A girls 3,000 metre race. Mienna Starosielski from Mallaig School set a new course record of 14:15.53 and says, “I couldn't have done it (breaking the record) without my year-round training with the NEAT track club and the great coaching by my phys-ed teacher Mr. MacGillivray.”
Saddie Cook from Ashmont School also set a new course record in the C Girls 2,000 metre run with a time of 9:53.99.
Another new junior high course record was made by Reid Skrypichayko from Glendon School, who set a time of 8:10.35 in the B Boys 2,000 metre.
A couple of high school athletes also set new times. Nicole Kitt from Regional High School set a time of 16:21.45 for the intermediate girls 4,000 metre run and Mathieu Vallee from Mallaig School set a new course record of 20:36.70 for the intermediate boys 5,000 metre run.
