The Collingwood Collegiate Fighting Owls Cross Country team has put together an historic season, performing a feat that no other school in the region has accomplished.
The Owls captured all four of the Georgian Bay Series meets with each of their six teams finishing first in every race during the season – a perfect 24-0 record.
Then, on Oct. 24, Collingwood hosted the GBSSA Cross Country Championships at Highlands Nordic in Duntroon and ran away with the overall girls’, boys’ and overall team titles with each of their six teams again taking top honours – all six establishing themselves as GBSSA Champions.
Now Collingwood will send all six of its teams to the OFSAA Provincial Cross Country Running Championships in Ottawa, which will be held at the Terry Fox Athletic Facility on Nov. 4.
In addition, GBSSA will be represented by six other teams from schools out of the Georgian Bay, Parry Sound and Muskoka region. Those teams will also be accompanied by 30 individual qualifiers spread over the six races along with a contingent of 9 Para athletes set to compete at OFSAA.
During the season, Collingwood put up solid performances in each Georgian Bay Series race taking top honours in the novice, junior and senior divisions — both boys and girls. As a result, the Fighting Owls were also the recipients of the Golden Boot which recognizes the overall team champion when the four meets were combined.
Individually, within the race series, Collingwood also placed many athletes near the top of their race fields. In the overall standings, Owls made up 19 of the top 48 finishers once the top eight in each race were ranked.
Special congratulations go to the season podium finishers including Alistair Wark - first in novice boys, Lan van der Valk - second in novice boys, Iris Green - first in novice girls, Adalyn Farnand - third in novice girls, Nolan Liotta - second in junior boys, Cole Rouse - third in junior boys, Ruby File - second in senior girls, Sadie Johnson - third in senior girls and then Wes MacMillan and Johnny Liotta narrowly missing the podium finishing fourth and fifth respectively in senior boys.
In addition, outstanding season series performance were posted by other top finishers including the junior boy champion Lucas Jensen from Holy Trinity, Junior Girl champion Sofia Smith from Parry Sound, Duncan Gray also from Parry Sound who was the top senior boy and the senior girl champion Nari Hwang from Eastview in Barrie. The top para racers included Imann Hannan from Bear Creek and Adam Maciel from Banting.
At the GBSSA Championship, put on by Collingwood Collegiate, the Owls showed themselves to be stingy hosts as they once again took top team honours in all six races — extending their streak to 30 straight victories in races hosted on Georgian Bay soil. On the season as a whole — including an invitational in Toronto, the Owls have posted 32 first-place finishes in the 36 races entered with two seconds and two thirds making up the balance of the results.
At the GB meet, the novice girls set the tone for the day with Iris Green and Adalyn Farnand finishing one and two to pace the team to a championship and an OFSAA berth. Lucy Davis, Leya Hamelin, Jane Evans and Oriel Monette all finished in the top 15 to round out the squad.
On the novice boys’ side, Alistair Wark continued his winning ways finishing in the top spot. Lane van der Valk was fifth and Ashton Veldhuis was seventh to add to the top-place team that also featured Charlie Johnson, Cameron McDermid and Liam Haldane.
The juniors then continued the trend as Beatrice Cheek, Stella Lennox and Julia Lehmann finished sixth, seventh, and ninth respectively to pace the girls' team to a championship. Taylor Steinberg, Rachel MacMillan and Leyah Carey all added top-15 finishes.
The guys then put together arguably the performance of the meet placing eight runners in the top 14 spots. Posting an incredible score of 14 points, the team was led by Nolan Liotta who was second but was then closely followed by Liam McFarlane, Logan Wood, Cole Rouse and Cole Elmes who were third, fourth, fifth and sixth respectively. Owen Edwards will also make his way to OFSAA finishing 12th.
The seniors then took to the hills above Duntroon and the female Owls showed they are a powerful team to be reckoned with as Sabine Cornell was the individual GBSSA Champion and was followed closely by Ruby File and Sadie Johnson who placed third and fourth. Elly Moore was ninth while Sofia Mundle and Kenzie Wall were 11th and 15th to round out a wonderful performance.
The senior boys then capped the day with a final winning team performance. Wes MacMillan battled to a second place result to lead the Owls and he was follwed by Johnny Liotta in eighth place while Evan Moore was 10th. Nathan Sims was then 12th, while George Hamburg and Memphis Palmer-Gummer were 18th and 19th to complete the OFSAA-bound squad.
Now the Owls will put their season successes on the back burner as they prepare to take on the best in Ontario at the OFSAA Championships this coming Monday. This meet will feature the top distance runners from all 20 athletic associations from across the province.
For those wishing to track the results for Collingwood Collegiate - or any of the OFSAA-bound athletes from Simcoe County, Parry Sound and Muskoka - they can do so by going to Trackdatabase.com and clicking on OFSAA XC. Results will be posted live with the first race going off at 10 a.m. on Nov. 4.
