The Horton Cross Country team had another successful season that wrapped up at provincials on Monday October 23rd in beautiful, but cold and damp, Cheticamp NS.
Prior to provincials, the Griffins sent 25 runners to Regionals at King’s Edgehill and came away with some great results highlighted by our senior boys team winning the Regional banner by a wide margin. Silas Conlin-Morse captured gold, Jacob White won silver, Tavish Gerrits was 4th and Ryan Newcombe was 5th to combine for an extremely low total of 12 points.
Our Intermediate boys and girls teams showed very well and came away with respectable second place finishes which advanced the teams onto the provincials. Mallory Ducarme won the individual silver medal for the intermediate girls event. Oliver Albert and Will Cleveland had top 10 finishes in the intermediate boys events.
Our senior girls squad ended up in 6th place and did not advance to provincials. However, Georgia Williams punched her ticket to provincials with a strong 6th place individual performance.
At the provincials in Cheticamp, the Griffins were struck with some bad luck as Will Cleveland and Jacob White were unavailable for the meet due to illness and injury. However, the intermediate boys finished a respectable 6th place overall and our intermediate girls battled adversity and ended up 11th overall. Horton runner Catie Smith lost her sneaker in a water hole 20 seconds into the race and continued on to complete the 4km trek with only a sock on her foot… that’s resilience!
The senior boys saved the dramatics for the final race of the day. The boys team captured the provincial title by 1 point over their rivals from Citadel High. Silas Conlin-Morse won his second straight senior boys title, winning the race by over a minute! Tavish Gerrits continued his stellar season with an incredible 8th place showing, catching a Citadel runner in the final stretch. Ryan Newcombe unleashed an all out sprint to place 17th and nip another Citadel runner at the finish line. Oliver Hubka stepped up to fill the void and finished a solid 27th place after passing several runners in the final kilometer to give the Griffins a 53 point total which secured the banner over Citadel who had 54 points. Ewan Miner also ran a solid race for the Griffins in his first senior high provincials.
The running culture at Horton is continuing to grow and all signs point toward a bright future for this program. A special thanks to coaches Ueli Albert and Chris Gray for helping me out at practices and meets. It was an enjoyable season!
Coach Mike King
