By Travis Cummings
Special to the Eagle
The St. Timothy’s Thunder High School cross country (XC) team showed an incredible amount of perseverance Oct. 9 at Canmore Park in Calgary. The XC season has been rife with cold weather and snowy conditions. This year’s edition of the City Championships reflected the overall theme this season has thrown at our athletes. Amid the weather challenges, the Thunder XC team fielded 17 athletes at the Calgary Zone meet with athletes competing in the Junior Boys, Intermediate Girls, Senior Girls, and Senior Boys categories.
The intermediate girls team achieved a dominating victory over all Calgary high schools, scoring 682 points to take the school’s 4th ever City Championship and first girls banner, winning handily over second place Western Canada High School with 405 points. Our intermediate girls team saw 13 athletes toe the line, and at the finish five of the top 10 athletes in this race wore Thunder singlets.
Leading the Thunder charge was Darci Petersen, with a bronze medal performance in a very competitive race at the front. Grade 10 rookie Holly Moores stepped up an age group and place fifth overall, close on the tail of her teammate. Emily Carvalho placed eighth, Makenna Myatt (also Grade 10) placed ninth, and a highly improved Miranda Hobbs placed 10th. Charlotte Trainor placed 14th, rounding out our six girls placing in the top 20. Clare Hurley placed 30th, Catherine Swedlo 51st, Carling Bremner 55th, Bria Michalski 65th, Carmela Kare 76th, Isabelle Goosney 88th, and Kyla Jardine 94th.
The girls' championship was a result of an extremely impressive team running effort, with girls of all ability levels stepping up throughout the season to help the team score points. What they have accomplished is a truly an exceptional feat.
In Junior Boys, rookie Ben Walker placed 65th, and in the Senior Girls race, Lauren McCullough was 72nd.
Our final race of the day featured the Senior Boys, of which Koover Schmidt and Jack Bentley contested for the Thunder. Schmidt and Bentley ran strong races, but admittedly didn’t have their best days. Schmidt placed 18th, and Bentley was 19th. Schmidt will be competing for the Thunder at ASAA provincials in Medicine Hat on Oct 19th, and Bentley will be the first alternate for Calgary Zone.
Our provincial qualifiers are Petersen, Moores, Carvalho, Myatt, Hobbs, Trainor, Schmidt, and Bentley (first alternate).
Coach Cummings, Coach Pham, Coach Kaiser, Coach Moores, and Coach Swedlo are extremely proud of the HS team’s efforts. Given the adversity the school program has seen with the weather this year (our JH races were cancelled), this makes this victory even more impressive.
