Women's X-Country Team is Headed to Nationals
For the first time since 2017, the Lancers fielded a complete women's team at the OCAA X-Country Championships hosted by Seneca College, and after an inspired race the team has qualified for the CCAA national championships.
The team of Cassandra Elliott, Jenna-Mae Oickle, Roya Shafai and Bianca Rainville finished 6th overall to secure the final spot at Nationals to be hosted by St. Clair College in Windsor on November 9th.
Throughout the regular season the team had put up solid individual performances, and showed good progression from race to race, but never had the required 4 team members together to create a team score. This time, with everyone present, they were able to truly run as a team and push each other to their best performances.
Elliott led the way, as she has done all season, with a 20th place overall finish on the challenging 6k route. She was followed closely by a hard charging Oickle in 23rd spot, only 9 seconds behind. The two Lancer frontrunners finished near the front of a tight pack of a dozen athletes, gaining several crucial points that would be needed for the overall team score. Behind them, Shafai (30th) and Rainville (41st) maintained their positions over the final kilometer and held off competitors to secure the team standing.
"This was an incredible team accomplishment," says head coach Kevin Beatty. "Our closest team competitors both had their first runners in the top 3 overall. We don't have that low-stick scorer, so we were behind right from the get-go. We needed to rely on depth, which meant everybody needed to have an "A" race, and the team delivered."
The improvement during the season was evident. All 3 athletes who competed on this course in September improved their times in the championship race, anywhere from 37 seconds to over 2 minutes.
The team will now turn their attention to the National Championships coming up in two weeks. They will be the first Loyalist team to compete at cross-country nationals since 2008, and the first women's team at nationals since 2004, when the Lancers took home the bronze medal.