Glebe captured it's 13th consecutive overall aggregate at the NCSSAA XC Title at Green's Creek on Thursday. The Gryphons won both the Senior Boy's and Senior Girl's races placed second in the Junior Girl's and fourth in the Junior Boy's. Nepean captured the Overall Girls Title with victories in the Novice Girl's and Junior Girl's, while Immaculata won the Boy's Title, placing runner up in both the Novice Boy's and Senior Boy's races and picking up a single point in the Junior Boy's race as well, placing 8th.
In the first race of the day, Loreti (Pierre Savard) lead much of the early going, but could not match Lebel's (Colonel By) finishing kick as she pulled away on the last loop of the soccer fields to a comfortable 10 second victory. McGregor (Immaculata) swapped places with The Element's Daniels from last week to earn the bronze.
Nepean, despite not having a runner in the top 10, packed all four close, lead by Annie Hume's 11th place finish to beat Colonel By for the team title by a single point 79-80 and will head to OFSAA as NC Champions. Garneau came oh so close with 84, as only 5 points separated the top 3 teams.
The Novice Boys saw the first upset of the day as Earl of March captured the NC Title. Wagner was the big difference maker for the Lions, having placed 34th last week at the West he improved to 17th in the larger NC field. Led by 4th place finisher Van Brabant, the drop in points was sufficient to eek out a 5 point victory over Immaculata 62-67. Immaculata's Skelton won the race over Merivale's Deever, while Bonilla (Holy Trinity) captured the bronze. Merivale was third with 79 points.
Nepean made it two for two capturing the Junior Girl's race. Last year's OFSAA Novice Girl's silver medalists showed their grit and had a much more comfortable margin of victory than their Novice Girls, tallying 46 points to runner-up Glebe's 99. John McCrae made a push to steal the spot from the Gryphons, but came up short with 107.
Lauter (Franco Ouest) followed by Davies (Immaculata) made a strong surge up the Green's Creek hill and started to pull away off the top. Van Wesenbeeck let them go, but reeled in Davies over the final k, to capture the silver.
Siderius (Colonel By) made a strong move heading down then back up Green's Creek hill in an attempt to break up the Junior Boy's pack and take the sting out of Mortimer's (Hillcrest) kick. It was a decisive move that put lots of daylight between him and most of the the field, but not enough to drop Mortimer. Mortimer had closed the gap by the time they came back out of the trails to the fields and pulled away over the second half of the race to capture his first NC XC crown. A duo of Rebelles, James Rebane and Gorall, took the third and fourth spots, attempting to give their team the low scores needed for the second qualifying spot, but unfortunately, McKercher and Yakimuch (John McCrae) were not far behind and with the strength of their back end, Harris and Lin the Bulldogs were able to hold off the Rebelles 62-72 to claim the second spot behind the Cougars 42 points.
Alexander (Glebe) and Giannotti (Holy Trinity) played it patient, content to sit in the chase pack, along with Streek (Peak), KJZ (Ashbury) and Jeffrey (St. FX) through the first half of the race, out to the hill and back. The chase pack slowly broke up over the second half as Alexander was able to overtake early race leader Chiumera (St. PiusX) in the woods before coming out to the fields with a comfortable gap, which she maintained over Giannotti through the finish. Streek ran through as well to claim the bronze. Alexander's teammates ran well behind her as Glebe posted a comfortable margin of victory, but it was behind the front running Gryphons that things were very interesting. At the half way point, only 3 points separated West Champs Paul Desmarais and East / West runners-up Ashbury and John McCrae (135-133-132). All teams really pushed for those valuable spots over the last mile with Ashbury emerging victorious 110-122 over McRae, with Paul Desmarais fourth with 125.
The big story of the day was the Glebe Senior Boys who placed all four scorers in the top 6, lead by Taler, who placed second, and Strachan who captured the bronze, with Heins not far behind in fourth. Cova (Louis Riel) prevented the Gryphon trio from sweeping the podium with a great display of strength as he started to string out the field after coming off the Green's Creek hill and continued to push over the second half to run to a 23 second victory. Their 15 - 106 victory over Immaculata was the lowest Senior Boys team score NCSSAA history.
As predicted, you can never count the Immaculata Boys out when they come in as underdogs. They relish the roll and it was all the motivation they needed to wrest the second qualifying spot away from West Champs Sir Robert Borden 106 - 116.
NC Blogger would like to wish all the qualifiers the best of luck at OFSAA next week and thank everyone for a great season!
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