Louis Riel Invitational

Nepean captured the Overall Aggregate at the Louis Riel Invitational on the trails of Green's Creek. Nepean won the Midget Girls, was second in the Midget and Senior Boys races and third in the Junior Girls for a 32-28 victory over the host Rebelles.

Full results are available on the Louis Riel XC site.

Gryphon Open

Just like the weather, things looked grim early on the for the host Gryphons, but as the day progressed, Glebe's teams began to shine and captured their home meet on the site of the 2016 NCSSA Cross Country Championships.  Nepean won the Midget Girls and St. Michael (Kemptville) took the Midget Boys, but Glebe swept the Junior and Senior races to capture the overall aggregate.

Shona McCulloch (Longfields) was dominant in her season debut winning the Senior Girls race by the largest margin of victory of the day (2:29) while Reilly McCann (Franco Cite) made a triumphant return to running, after sitting out the entire 2015-2016 school year due to illness, winning the Senior Boys race.

Full results are available on the Glebe XC page

Pirates Invitational

Louis Riel was the lone NC school to compete at the Pirates Invitational in Brockville on Friday, Sept 23rd.  The Rebelles, led by Olivier Ducharme (8th) placed 3rd in the Midget Boys race.  Megan Roy was 7th in the Junior Girls race while Jonathan Rioux hit the podium with a 3rd place finish in the Senior Boys race for the Rebelles.

Full results are available on the Pirates website.

Trinity Invitational

National Capital athletes from four schools got an early season look at this year's OFSAA course participating at the Trinity Invitational in Port Hope.  The most appropriately named athlete of the meet, Joe Fast (Ridgemont), was the lone individual champion, winning the Midget Boys race in 17:38.  Glebe athletes Teagan Shapansky and Mei Mei Weston picked up silver medals in the Junior and Senior Girls races while Keili Shepherd earned bronze in the Senior Girls race.

The defending OFSAA Senior Girls Champions from Glebe showed their strength and depth placing all four scoring runners in the top 7, while the 5th through 8th runners ran well enough to place themselves 3rd overall in the meet, which uses multiple dynamic team scoring.  Glebe's Junior Girls, bronze at last years OFSAA Championships, turned the tables on last year's runner up team from Theriault with a narrow 35-36 victory.

Glebe captured the Overall Aggregate for the third consecutive year with a narrow 26-25 victory over Theriault (Timmins).

Full results are available on the Trinity Cross Country page.

XCookie Run

Louis Riel claimed both the Intermediate Boys and High School Boys Titles on their home course as National Capital harriers kicked off their cross country season on the trails at Green's Creek.  St. Mary's (Brockville) and All Saints won the Intermediate Girls and High School Girls races.

Full results available on the Louis Riel website or the Glebe XC page

2016 Cross Country Season!

Welcome to the 2016 Cross Country Season!  After a long, hot summer, National Capital Harriers look to turn up the heat on the courses around the National Capital Region.  This fall, the OFSAA XC Championships will be held at Trinity College in Port Hope, ON.

Please check for updates and results on the Glebe XC site or click on meet names below for direct links to meet websites, if available.  If you have information about a meet not listed below, please send us meet info to kirk.dillabaugh@ocdsb.ca.

Good luck this fall!

XCookie Run - Friday, Sept., 16th - Hornet's Nest
Trinity Invitational - Wednesday, Sept., 21st - Port Hope, ON
Pirates Invitational - Friday, Sept., 23rd - Memorial Park, Brockville, ON
Gryphon Open - Wednesday, Sept., 28th - Mooney's Bay
Kingston Invitational - Thursday, Sept., 29th - Fort Henry, Kingston
McQuaid Invitational - Saturday, Oct., 1st - Rochester, NY
pre-OFSAA - Wednesday, Oct., 5th - Port Hope, ON
Turkey Trot - Thursday, Oct., 6th - Kemptville, ON
Rebelles Invitational - Thursday, Oct., 6th - Hornet's Nest
National Capital XC Challenge - Friday, Oct., 14th (Elementary Saturday, Oct 15th) - Mooney's Bay
North Dundas Invitational - Friday, Oct., 14th
**West Conference Champs - Tuesday, Oct., 18th - Walter Baker, Kanata - New Date**
East Conference Champs - Wednesday, Oct 19th - Hornet's Nest
NCSSAA Championships - Thursday, Oct., 27th - Mooney's Bay
OFSAA XC Championships - Saturday, Nov., 5th -  Port Hope, ON

2015 OFSAA Report

Glebe Collegiate won their 4th Consecutive Girls Aggregate capturing the Senior Girls race for the 2nd year in a row, and claiming bronze in the Midget Girls race and Antique Bronze (4th) in the Junior Girls race at the 2015 OFSAA Cross Country Championship in Duntroon.

National Capital athletes had some very strong performances on a very tough, hilly, muddy and at times treacherous course.

The Glebe Midget Girls started the day off on a good note.  Lead by Teagan Shapansky's 8th place finish, the Gryphons scored 287 points to edge East Northumberland by 5 points in a tight batle for the bronze medal that saw third through 6th separated by only 21 points.  Shapansky was followed by teammates Rosayln Barrett (34th), Sarah MacIntosh (61st) and Taya Davison (184th).

Glebe's Midget Boys tried to equal the performance of the girls and came very close, finishing in a tie for 5th, but winning on the tiebreaker (higher 4th place finisher).  National Capital Champion Brady Johnston-Neilson (Sir Robert Borden) ran a strong race to capture antique bronze, while Jack Pensom led the Gryphons with a 5th place finish and was followed by Henry Morris (53rd), Tom Lane (100) and Aidan Westdal (101).

In the Junior Girls race, Glebe's Mei Mei Weston found herself getting dropped early by heavy favorite Jocelyn Chau (Toronto - De La Salle) who, up the first two major climbs gave herself a very comfortable 25 second lead.  Weston kept tracking her and started gaining quickly on the final downhill section of the course.
A scary fall for Weston might have been the end of her comeback attempt, but she bounced up quickly and continued her pursuit, and when Chau had a fall of her own Weston pounced.  Chau took considerably longer to get back up and moving and it wasn't long afterward that Weston went charging by and ran unchallenged over the last few hundred metres to the finish line.  Weston's teammates Mzia Lee Pottie (87), Suzannah Barrett (89) and Lauren Mouser (126) secured yet another podium finish for the Gryphon Girls.

Philippe Turcanu (Bell) put his poor race at the NC meet behind him in a big way.  Turcanu, ran brilliantly up and down the hills of Highlands Nordic to capture antique bronze, finishing 20 seconds ahead of National Capital Champion Jonathan Rioux (Louis Riel) who placed 8th.  Sir Robert Borden managed to crack the top 10, placing 10th overall lead by Devon Pegrum (54th) with teammates Jared Poole (78), Lucas Zanetti (105) and Jacob Price (184) rounding out the scoring for the Bengals.

The Glebe Senior Girls have been dominant over the past two seasons and were one of a few of the favorites that performed as expected on the unpredictable terrain.  Glebe packed all four scorers inside the top 40.  Glebe had a tight pack upfront in Katherine Marshall (10th), Ali Pouw (11th) and Keili Shepherd (16th) who all finished within 25 seconds of each other, with Cassidy Grimes (40th) less than a minute back.
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A bad fall unfortunately put an end to Shona McCulloch's undefeated streak as she was unable to finish the race.  McCulloch ran side by side with Champion Maddie Ghazarian for most of the race until about 1K to go when McCulloch started to encounter some difficulties, eventually collapsing with about 600m to go. All NC athletes and coaches wish her a speedy recovery and hope to see her tearing up XC courses again soon.

Franco Ouest ensured that the NC Region put a team in the top 10 in every single race as they finished 8th in a very deep, competitive Senior Boys field, extracting a measure of revenge for their loss to Glebe at the NC Championships.  Nicholas Roberts (30), Michael Mather (83), Noah Bouma (131) and Justin Bullock (191) tallied for the Vikings.

Hamam Quider (Woodroffe) was the lone NC competitor in the Para race, placing 10th overall.

NC Blogger would like to once again thank everyone for a great season and congratulate all teams on their success.  Full results can be found on www.trackdatabase.com