AGSI in the Community: - October 29, 2009
Ultimate AGSI Flyers at the Provincial Cross-Country Championships. Held last Saturday, October 24, 2009 - LaSalle Park, Burlington Ontario.
Halton Hills own AGSI Flyers came off a successful track and field season to turn up the heat on this past Saturday's overcast day in Burlington for the Minor Track Associations Provincial Cross-Country Championships.
The Flyers did extremely well capturing 3 top three provincial team finishes in the Mite Boys (2nd), Tyke Girls (3rd), and Atom Girls (2nd) divisions. Individually the flyers had 4 top ten finishes with Jillian Knowles (pic) being the top individual performer of the day finishing fourth in the Mite Girls race.
The Mite Boys results had the Hamilton Hammerheads in 1st with 35pts, AGSI Flyers 2nd with 39pts, and just one point behind was Brantford Legion with 40pts. The races come down to who is toughest in the final stretch and this was no more evident today than when Mathew Swan (pic) squeaked into 12th place holding off one of his competitors in the final straightaway. The Mite Boys team was lead to the finish line today by Michael Hamilton who had a great top ten finish in 7th place and the scoring was rounded out by fellow teammate Justin Siriska in 20th. A great day for this team finishing with the Silver medal!
Team depth is very important and that showed through today with both the Tyke and Atom Girl races. The Flyers had 15 Tyke Girls toe the line to start the race today. The race went out nice and fast with the Flyers Meaghan Hector and Rachel Carson in 1st and 2nd place respectively. They setup a great tough pace for the field to try to keep up with however after about 400 meters Meghan was unable to continue the race due to illness, so it was hugely important for her remaining teammates to pick up those ever valuable top finishes to still give themselves a chance at the team title. These girls battled hard today finishing in third place in the Province with St. John's from Toronto in 1st with 18pts, South Simcoe Dufferin (Barrie Area) 2nd with 33 pts and our own Halton Hills team in 3rd with 34 pts. The picture includes Eden Alchin, Cassidy Korohonen, Lindsay Quinn, and the Sippel sisters Meghan and Allison who were working their way through the other competitors with just over half the race to still complete.
The Flyers Atom Girls team started today with 10 competitors having lost one of our top runners due to an injury so before the race started this team absolutely knew they would have to step-it-up from being the Provincial favorites to even have a go at the gold medal. So this race turned into a shootout for the win, right off the gun Mackenzie Cameron went into the lead group and started the hopes for the team, Hannah Scott who had flu like symptoms prior to the start of the race, pushed all those thoughts out of her mind and ran to keep the leaders close until she could use her strength of hill running and then she moved hard towards the front of the field finishing in 7th place overall. Mackenzie who started cramping very hard was running through the pain to the finish and Maddie Shiell had her best race of the year to help the team by continuing to pass competitors right through the finish line catching and passing at least 10 competitors in the final 150 meter. By the end of the scoring South Simcoe Dufferin had won the Provincials with 41pts, followed closely by our own Flyers with 44pts, and then the Brooklyn Cheetas from Whitby had 54pts. This will be an extremely tough team next year with most of the girls remaining in this age division.
Our Senior boys ran well today with a Personal Best on the course and a spectacular finish by Mitchell Krafczek (pic) who has improved his time by a minute this year alone over the same distance to record a 25th place finish. Maclean Shiell who has been competing all year for the high school came out and ran a very impressive race to finish 15th overall looking extremely stong. Maclean will be joined by the rest of the AGSI Flyers Senior boys to also run in the Athletics Ontario Championships in the midget category.
