After a golden debut an Okotoks runner added a silver lining to her collection.
Holy Trinity Academy Knight Evonne Henning raced to a silver medal finish in the senior girls 5-km race at the Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association Cross-Country Championships on Oct. 16 in Red Deer, two years after claiming the provincial title.
“The pressure is there to do as well as I did in Grade 10, however I was actually a lot more relaxed going into the race,” said Henning. “I knew the girl that got number-one, (Chloe Turner) she was going to be a really tough competitor just from how she competed in the outdoor season and her other races.
“I knew it was going to be a good, hard race, but I feel like I was ready and I was excited to race.”
Turner, from William Aberhart in Calgary, won the 5-km event in a time of 18:57 with Henning coming in at the 20:54 mark.
Both Henning and teammate Cadence Laplante were also top-10 finishers as juniors at the 2019 provincials.
“To have such a good teammate like Cadence racing against me, she definitely pushed me to be a better athlete and better competitor,” Henning said.
“I think it’s phenomenal that the school had three top-10 finishes this year and five athletes going to provincials.”
Laplante shot up the ranks from ninth in Grade 10 to fifth two years later with no provincial event held during the 2020-21 school year.
“To move up that much in the top-10 is stellar, just phenomenal and she looked pretty comfortable,” said Knights cross-country coach Paula Paulgaard. “She was right there amongst them, only about 27 seconds off the third place finisher.
“I think she had one of her best races, at least with us, and kind of peaked at the right time.”
The competition was held on a golf/cross country ski course on a balmy fall day cresting over the 20-degree mark.
“It was definitely a challenging course, the walk-through did not do it justice. It was definitely different once you were there,” Henning added. “But I would definitely say hills are one of my strong points so I was excited to run.”
Henning, a club track athlete with the Calgary Warriors, has been training for club nationals next month in Ottawa so there wasn’t an opportunity to taper for provincials.
“Unfortunately on that day I just was not feeling 100 per cent when I started running and it was a little harder than I expected,” she said. “But I’m still pretty happy with how everything went.”
Katrina Michel, a Centre for Learning at Home Grade 11 student, competed for the Knights and finished in 25th in the senior girls race.
“It was so nice to be able to compete for the school again,” Henning said.
“It was such a surreal environment and supportive environment to compete with our school and I was glad to be able to do it again.”
In the junior boys division, Leon Spatz raced to a seventh-place finish while Peter Wonderham was 26th overall.
“Leon, in the first lap he was in the low 20s positioning and he looked pretty comfortable and we thought if he could break the top-20 that would be great,” Paulgaard said. “The next time I saw him he was about 18th and he had probably a kilometre and a half to go and then they come over this hill where we can finally see them, it’s kind of dramatic, and we’re counting 1-2-3, and Leon showed up and caught up tremendously to get into the top-10. I actually think if the course was a kilometre longer he would have caught up.
“Peter, I was very impressed with him, he definitely pushed himself through the hills and when he finished he was exhausted…It definitely shows us he left everything on the course.”
Henning said practices and team events were a thrill and gave the older members of the team a chance to connect with their younger peers in a mentorship role, something she was able to experience as a Grade 10 on the team.
“I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” she said. “Cross-country is definitely one of those sports where you do compete for yourself and I want to be successful as an individual, but it’s being there and supporting your team, being at practices.”
Fast Falcons
A strong contingent of six proudly represented Foothills Composite in Red Deer. The Falcons boasted a finalist in each race with Grade 12s Nya Evans and McLean Hillestad, Grade 11s Josh Heuver and Brynn Holditch and Sydney Neukom and Fraser Jalbert in the junior ranks.
“They are an incredibly talented and supportive group of athletes,” said Falcons cross-country coach Kathryn Strilchuk. “They competed against the top-80 kids in their division throughout the province which I think is pretty spectacular in and of itself.”
Qualification through zones was more stringent this season, as a means of limiting the number of competitors due to the pandemic, with only the top-10 finishers moving onto provincials rather than the top-18 as was the case in the past.
Heuver finished a team-best fifth in the intermediate boys, crossing the finish line in the 5-km race in 18:25.
“It was pretty great and I really enjoyed being out there again. I missed it from last year,” Heuver said. “The race went amazing, best result I could have hoped for and it was great to see everyone out there.
“I think the only way to describe that course would be brutal. It was a very hilly course right off the start, you go up steep up-and-down hills on that cross-country course. For my race, it was just holding on to the guys ahead of me.”
Heuver is the second member of his family to make it to the provincial stage with older brother Jacob representing the Falcons at the 2019 event.
“Jacob kind of started the whole running thing with our family,” Josh said. “He was the first one of us to go to provincials and run at school, or anything like that, and it was really what brought us all into it.
“Without him, I wouldn’t have been able to be where I am today.”
Among Grade 10s, Jalbert finished 19th and Neukom was 40th. Holditch was 51st among the intermediate girls while Hillestad was 41st in senior boys and Evans was 55th in the senior girls race.
“We were fearful that we weren’t going to be able to compete so we were so grateful to have had the opportunity to follow through with the season,” Strilchuk said.
“A lot of those kids run in a community team as well, so they still have that opportunity to train, but we had new kids who wanted to be a part of the team which was great. We still had three practices a week, still did speed training, we still did hills. All the kids competed at divisional, competed at zones and the parent support was amazing.
“And the kids did really well, the courses were tough. Trochu for zones was super tough and these kids can dig deep and they pull out all the stops in the end.”
A perennial power in cross-country, the Strathcona-Tweedsmuir Spartans had another strong showing at provincials with five athletes at the finals.
Avery Martin finished 18th in the intermediate boys division, Claire O’Leary was 15th in intermediate girls, Avinash Murthy was 24th in junior boys, Olivia Gluffre was 46th in junior girls and in the senior girls event Lillian Pernitsky finished 58th.
For more information on the Cross-Country Championships go to asaa.ca.
