Lakers cross-country team opens with top ten finish

The Lakers cross-country team kicked off the official season at Don Mills Classic, hosted by the University of Waterloo.

The Lady Lakers with a full team placed 7th, lead by rookie Meghan Gibson who placed 49th with a solid 20.17 over the 4.49 km course. What a difference a year makes as Heather Hardie showed a significant improvement from a year ago placing 61st in 21.05, 2 seconds head of Melanie Prouse who had been running with Gibson until a pesky side stitch forced her to ease off the pace. Heather Edwards in her first cross-country debut placed 71st in 21.50. Former Trojan and rookie Kelsey Piper placed 83rd in 24.30 followed by Kathleen Crawford in 25.07.

Assistant coach Donna Mae Robins showed her training is on track for the Ontario Cross Country championships scheduled for November 20th in Woodstock as she placed 2nd overall in 17.05.improving on her 6th place finish here last year.

Assistant coach Robins believes it was a successful meet for the Lakers.

“Overall I think the team performed well," Robins said.

"It was our first cross meet of the year. Coming in, we felt we could challenge Trent, Brock and Laurier, but they have made significant improvements too, so the challenge for us will be to keep improving and get big efforts consistently from everyone."

On the men’s side, the team made the trip minus three key runners and subsequently were one runner short to count in the team scoring. Last year’s team leader Jon Pratt continued the trend being the first Laker to break the tape in 34.08 over the 8.9km course to place 36th. First year rookies Rory Currie and Craig Browne ran in tandem for parts of the race with both making impressive debuts to the university circuit with Currie getting the nod in 35.07 closely followed by Browne in 35.16 with both having very strong finishes placing 50th and 53rd respectively. Browne showed his fortitude running the last 4km without his shoes having removed then due to excessive blistering. Grant Butterworth closed the scoring with a 49.09 placing 85th.

Coach Tim Uuksulainen summarized the race with cautious optimism, “With three rookies in the line-up, we will have a core from which to build beyond this year. Add the likes of Kevin Beatty who has incredible strength with a 10km best of 30 minutes Jesse Jewell who raced previously for the University of Windsor and Cam Hodgins who ran well for us last year, we will definitely do much better.

"Realistically, our goal for both the men and women’s teams is to improve our performance by position and overall points at the Championship meet on October 29th.”

The University of Waterloo won both the men and women’s team titles with powerhouse teams like Windsor, Guelph and University of Western Ontario competing in the United States. The team’s next meet will be in Kingston on October 15th.

Submitted to BayToday.ca