Lucas Punkari
For most of us, being thrown right into the mix against the very best athletes in the province might seem extremely intimating.
But for Muskie cross-country runners Sydney Radigan and Hailey Beaudry, their first-ever trip to the all-Ontario championships in Brampton on Saturday was one they’ll never forget.
“It was hard, but I’m very happy that I got to go to OFSAA and I had a really good time,” Radigan enthused.
“It was a lot of fun, and it was a chance to compete against a lot of people and really see everyone’s skill levels,” noted Beaudry.
After leaving Fort Frances on Thursday, the pair arrived for a run-through of the Heart Lake Conservation Area course on Friday—and quickly discovered it was lot different than the courses they had competed at earlier this year in Kenora, International Falls, and Thunder Bay.
“I was shocked, actually, as it was really big hills and a really muddy course,” admitted Radigan, who is in Grade 9.
“It was nice out there, but the mud and the debris was kind of hard so that made things lot different,” she explained.
“It doesn’t compare as much to the Thunder Bay courses,” agreed Beaudry, a 10th-grader at Fort High.
“But I liked the fact that it was in a trail system in the bush, and going up and down on the hills was something different,” she reasoned.
Competing against 263 other runners in the three-km girls’ Midget race, Radigan came away with a 140th-place finish with a time of 14:05.
“I was really nervous at the start, but I sort of got into the swing of things as the race got going,” Radigan recalled.
“It was pretty crowded out there and I ended up actually knocking a couple of people over as I was trying to get around everybody.
“Everyone was trying to get the finish line, so it was hard but I felt I had a good run,” she added.
As for Beaudry, who ran in the four-km Junior girls’ event, she came away with a 174th-place finish out of 266 runners with a time of 18:58.
“Like in Sydney’s race, there were a lot of people out there so it was hard to get in and out at times,” she remarked.
“It was still a good race and I improved my best time by 12 seconds, so I was really happy with that.
“But I was still about two-and-a-half to three minutes behind the first-place finisher so I still have a lot to work on for next year,” Beaudry conceded.
Even though the start of another cross-country running season won’t come around again until next fall, both runners already are anxious about doing whatever they can to return to the all-Ontarios once again.
“I just need to train more, I think,” said Radigan. “When you see all of the people there that train every day, and do it all year-round, it’s pretty crazy.”
“I just want to use this experience in trying to help the rest of my team get there next year, so that we have a lot of people going to the provincials like Dryden does,” Beaudry added.
With both Beaudry and Radigan becoming the first Muskies in a number of years to qualify for OFSAA, one of the goals for the future of the cross-country program is to make that achievement a regular occurrence.
“Now that we have seen what it’s like there, we can use that as great motivators for next year when the athletes come out for us,” reasoned coach Natasha Shack.
“Sometimes the OFSAA meet can be on a hilly course or a flat trail, so knowing that ahead of time and training for that will be a key.
“Plus, with how crowded it is at the start there compared to the other events, it’s best for them to try and get out in the front in a situation like that, instead of laying back and steadily picking up the pace,” she noted.
