Cleo Seldon
Special to the Mirror
Carihi senior girls and boys cross country teams made their way down to Victoria on a blustery and wet morning last week in an attempt to achieve some school history and try to have both teams qualify for the 2016 cross-country provincial championships.
Over the years the school has produced some fine girls and boys teams and some outstanding individual performances. What they haven’t been able to do is send both teams to the B.C.s in the same year.
Was this to be the year?
The Island championship at Elk Lake is always a tough battle, with some real power house schools from both the north and the south. The Tyees, to succeed in their goal, needed to be among the top five teams across the Island. The first to race were the senior girls, in what looked to be 100 strong runners. It was a challenging 4.7 km course, and although the rain had subsided, the course was still slippery and treacherous.
The Carihi girls ran a fine race.
The first of the Tyees to finish was Mairin Shields Brown (19th), followed by Cleo Seldon (20th) and not long after Emma Skalik (25th), and Mackayla Gray (26th) who finished the scoring for the team. These four were supported by Abbie Simms, Jolyn Bartley and Kayley Wingert whose strong runs helped increase the team points. Once finished, the girls had an anxious 45 minute wait to find out if they made the top five.
It was during this 45 minutes that the boys headed out to the line to start their race.
The boys were lead by Jack Crosby, who came in 11th, and Antoine Minfrey (14th). Minfrey made it all the more remarkable by the fact he played a major role in the junior boys soccer team North Islands Championship victory the day before. Coming in third for the team was Jeffery Lindenbach (20th), and Shohei Iwamoto (21st) completing the team score.
Crucial and very important runs to displace were provided by Andrew Daniels and Jonah Shankar.
At the end of the race the boys, like the girls, were cautiously optimistic as they had produced some excellent packing as a team, which is a key to success in cross-country running.
As is tradition, the results were shortly announced shortly after the senior boys race. In the senior girls race, fourth and fifth was separated by one point with Saint Micheals University school lying in fifth, and Brentwood in fourth place. To the delight of the Tyee girls, Carihi was announced as the third place finishers and their goal to reach the provincials in Kelowna was achieved. Dover came second and Oak Bay won the race.
The boys race saw NDSS in fifth, Dover Bay in fourth and the male Tyees again claimed third.
History was made.
Both girls and boys teams have made it to the provincials championship.
The two teams will be headed to Kelowna on Nov. 4.