The Oilfields Drillers are once again living up to the Black and Gold billing.
Grade 10 student Carver Morris chased down the top spot among junior boys to bring home gold at the Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association Provincial Cross-Country Championships on Oct. 21 in Trochu.
Morris said he stayed in the front pack with the top-10 for most of the race and wanted to stay in close range without being in top spot.
“I didn’t ever want to lead and stayed back in fourth until the final hill,” he said. “The top-four were all mixed up together, the first place guy dropped because he pushed too hard and it was just the two Cochrane boys and me and it was a sprint to the finish from third to first.”
His time of 14:48 eclipsed Cochrane Cobras medallists Raimo Sollitt and Eli Torrie by two and three seconds, respectively,
Morris was in a similar position at the same Trochu track at South Central Zones earlier in the month, where he finished fourth amongst the same group of top competitors.
“At zones, I was a lot further back at the end and it was a lot harder to get myself to finish hard,” he said. “This time, it was a lot easier with that motivation factor when they’re right there and I knew they were in striking distance.”
Home-track advantage was at play for those from South Central with the zones held at the same course and Trochu being the site of a number of regional and zone events over recent years.
“It’s like a home advantage and is easier to know where to pace yourself, when to push and when to hold back a little,” Morris said. “Everyone can do a course-walk before the race so there is that, but you do get that bit more muscle memory with the course compared to all of the other racers.”
Morris said it feels pretty sweet to be a provincial champion adding he didn’t let the fact he was the only Driller at the competition get to him.
“I’m not too bothered by any of that stuff, it doesn’t really matter what others will think,” he said. “Of course, everyone was always surprised some kid from Black Diamond was up with the leaders, especially since I don’t race club.
“But that doesn’t matter too much to me.”
The Foothills Falcons had all seven of their qualifiers bring home top-50 finishes at provincials.
Grade 10 Noah Heuver finished ninth, older brother Nathan Heuver was 21st as part of a Grade 11 group that also saw Nash Byam take 22nd, Brock Felker in 48th and Ella Killshaw in 34th.
Foothills seniors Fraser Halbert and Sydney Neukom were 20th and 30th, respectively.
“Just in general, athletes with injuries powered through and worked hard all season,” said Falcons coach Danyka Culbert. “We had an awesome season of growth for all of our runners.”
Culbert said zones gave the athletes a good reading of what to expect at provincials with much better conditions in their favour the second time around.
“Provincials was actually a perfect running day,” Culbert said. “The kids knew the course, they knew what to expect and they had trained for those hills that we would see.
“The only thing that changed from zones to provincials was they added about an extra 200 metres to the course. That kind of threw some runners off that had done it before.
“But overall, I think we had that home-field advantage.”
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights capped a season of growth in their own right with all 11 of their competitive stream athletes making it to provincials.
“Our focus this year was just to get as many kids running as we could both competitively and recreationally,” said Knights coach Paula Paulgaard. “Some of them then caught the bug and wanted to compete.”
In Trochu, the Knights made considerable headway in the junior girls division with a quartet of top-60 finishes (Cadrien Harker-39th, Abbey Easton-43rd, Carmella Yee-48th and Jaime Burchell-57th).
Grade 11 Eva Gustafson finished a school-best 20th with Madison Maksymich in 75th. The Grade 12 group featured Peter Wonderham in 36th, Meghan McFadyen in 87th, Alyssa Sanden in 91st and Kaitlyn Brown in 94th.
“(Coach Bruce Dickie) and I are just so happy with how they really gave it their all to the point where some of them were on the cusp of being hurt,” Paulgaard added. “And represented our school with such determination and grit and sportsmanship.
“It was beautiful to see from a coach's perspective and even though we didn’t win a banner or any medals, it was probably one of our most successful years as a team.”
The Strathcona-Tweedmsuir Spartans also had a strong showing in Trochu with seven athletes in the event.
Grade 12s Avinash Murthy, Faith Jinjika and Sabina Siddiqui were 21st, 76th and 77th, respectively. In the intermediate level, Abbey Meheriuk was 60th and Maia McGillivray was 64th with Grade 10s Lucy Govender 54th and Max Goode in 83rd.
For more information on the event, visit asaa.ca/championships.
