Many Okotoks runners would have likely been at the provincial high school provincial cross-country championships in late October, but COVID-19 stopped the athletes in their tracks.
However, some runners still got the chance to compete this fall thanks to the Okotoks Track and Cross-country club’s mini-outdoor fall season.
“There was no school sports for me at all — no cross-country,” said Jacob Huever, a Grade 12 student at Foothills Composite High School. “This club is the main thing that kept me running. It would be easy to say, hey there is no reason to run.”
Heuver, who qualified for the high school provincial championships in 2019, won the Grade 12 boys division for the club’s cross-country season. He was the first to cross the finish line in the series’ final event, a 4.4 km multiple-loop run around the duck pond at École Beausoleil on Oct. 29.
The series consisted of five races, which started in September, at various courses in the Okotoks area.
“It’s not provincials, but it is still competitive,” Heuver said. “It is still something to look forward to and a reason to train. It’s fun… I think I have improve every time, it’s hard to tell because the races are different distances, but I feel I am running faster and at the end of the race, I feel like I can go a little further each time.”
There were 33 athletes competing in the series.
Heuver’s toughest competition was close to home — his brother Josh was a few steps behind him at École Beausoleil.
Jacob found the competition improving from all the runners throughout the season.
"Hugh (McGregor) and Leon (Spatz) are getting pretty fast – it’s harder and harder every race,” he said of the Foothills Comp and Holy Trinity Academy athletes, respectively.
Grade 10 student Georgia Fischl was hoping to run her first high school cross-country season.
“I joined this club last year and over the summer I was getting ready to race at HTA,” Fischl said. “Once everything got cancelled it was a bit of a setback because I had worked so hard – I was looking for a challenge.”
The OTCC season provided her some challenge.
“I loved it, it was like having real cross-country races,” said Fischl, who tied for first in the OTCC series with Lauren Friesen in the Grade 10 Girls division. “It wasn’t as competitive as school things but having these races, it was nice to have the competition.”
More important than winning, Fischl improved considerably from the first race in September to the final one on Oct. 29.
“These little races have definitely pushed me and all the practices have really pushed me,” Fischl said. “I felt pretty good about all my races.”
She gives credit to her improvement to the coaches, who are Mark Toombs, Richard Ellum and Jayni Caldwell.
“They are very, very supportive,” Fischl said. “They have great workouts. They are a big factor in my improvement.”
Thee was also a team component to the series.
Toombs and Ellum have both ran the Boston Marathon. Caldwell was a long-time cross-country coach at the Comp, as was Ellum.
“We wanted to do this series because there is not much going on at school in terms of competition,” Toombs said. “A whole bunch of them had great improvement… a great bunch of kids.”
The athletes will now start training at the Crescent Point Fieldhouse. The cost to join the club is $90 for the September to June cross-country and track season.
The majority of the funding for the OTCC is from the Big Rock Runners Club, which gave $1,000 in scholarships to Okotoks area runners in June.
The winners of the Okotoks Track and Cross-Country five race series were: Girls — Grade 7, Summer O'Brien; Grade 8, Alli McGregor; Grade 9, Sydney Neukom; Grade 10, tie, Lauren Friesen, Georgia Fischl; Grade 11, Cadence Laplante. Boys —Grade 7, Noah Heuver; Grade 8, Nathan Heuver; Grade 9, Alec Finlayson; Grade 10, Josh Heuver; Grade 12, Jacob Heuver.
