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Local high school athletes training for spring track and field

April 18, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Students at local high schools have started early spring training for upcoming track and field meets and they have been on the field since returning from March Break.

Both Orangeville District High School and Westside Secondary Schools have track teams that will compete.

Rob Berg, coach at ODSS has stepped up and is also acting as coach at Westside after the high school couldn’t find a suitable candidate to coach track athletes.

The teams have already competed at one preliminary meet at York University on April 11. This was an indoor meet.

The teams will be competing in sprint and long-distance running, as well as all the regular field events.

Pole vaulting is an event at the high school level, but only a few schools compete as it requires a club-certified coach.

“We’ve got every sport covered except for pole vault,” Rob explained. “Distance, sprints, hurdles, the throws, high jump, long jump, triple jump, shot-put, discus, javelin, it’s all covered. We have a really strong distance program. We ran very strong in the 1600 meter at the York meet. It’s usually a 1500-meter race – our guys won one, two, three, four. The fifth-place finisher was 13 seconds behind us. It was a 12 school meet. It wasn’t a big meet, but they are looking good. We had other winners throughout the day.”

The ODSS team has seven coaches in total working with the athletes. There are close to 75 athletes participating in the ODSS track and field program this year so they will have a good showing once the competition gets underway. Westside will be fielding a smaller team.

The serious track competition will get underway in May.

The first day of the District Competition will take place at the University of Guelph on May 7. The second day of competition will take place on Tuesday, May 14, at St. James High School in Guelph.

Athletes must win at the Districts. From there they can go on to regional competition at CWOSSA.

Because of the large number of events and athletes at track and field meets, there is a preliminary OFSAA competition called the West Regionals.

Winners there will go on to compete at OFSAA on June 6 – 8 in London.

Orangeville winners at the York University meet include:

Seniors

• Logan Willcott, ODSS – 1600m – 4.36.17
• Craig Stevenson, ODSS – 600m – 1.27.18
• Demaiyah Woodard, ODSS – 200m – 27.18

Juniors

• Ailsa Bogan, ODSS – 600m 1.56.02 – 1600m ­­– 6.07.40
• Sage Hazell-Snell, ODSS 60m 8.42 – 200m – 28.07
• Ryan Tovell, Westside – 600m – 1.49.79

Relays

• Ailsa Bogan, Keira Phillip, Spencer McClaren, Craig Stevenson, ODSS – 4 x 400m – Open mixed 2B, 2G – 4.14.34

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