Sports

Orangeville District Secondary School track athletes compete in provincials at OFSAA, take home gold

June 22, 2023   ·   0 Comments

By Brian Lockhart

Two Orangeville District Secondary School (ODSS) track athletes competed in the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) competition in Ottawa from June 8 to 10.

This year’s provincial competition was held at the Terry Fox Athletic Facility.

Keltrick Amanatey raced in the 300-metre hurdles and won bronze with a time of 39.92 seconds. This was the first medal a track and field athlete from ODSS has won at OFSSA since 2005.

Keltrick worked hard to get to OFSAA, competing at the District level, CWOSAA, and OFSAA west, to qualify for the Ottawa meet.

Keltrick competed at the District level last year but was disappointed with his time. This year he managed to take three seconds off his time to win.

“I came first in the Districts,” Keltrick explained. “Last year, I didn’t get the time I wanted – it was 45 seconds. When I went to Districts this year, I cut it down to 42 seconds.”

Keltrick won the gold CWOSSA with a time of 41 seconds to qualify to go to OFSAA West. There are three OFSAA qualifiers in the province that narrow the competition down to the top athletes.

“Only four people from OFSAA West qualify to go to OFSAA,” added coach Derek Snider. “They only do that for track because there’s just too many athletes. It’s really a first stage of OFSAA competition. At OFSAA there’s three heats of eight, and the top two in every heat, and the next two top times, go to the final.”

At OFSAA, Keltrick found himself in lane number four. It was a close race. Keltrick finished just .63 seconds behind the first-place runner to earn the bronze medal.

As a Grade 10 student, Keltrick still has two seasons to compete and said he is looking forward to getting back on the track next year and improving his time.

Craig Stevenson went to OFSAA to compete in the 800-metre event.

Originally, Craig ran the 1500-metre and 3000-metre race, but at the suggestion of his coach Rob Berg, he tried the 800-metre event.

“Mr. Berg suggested it to me,” Craig explained of his start in the event. “He said, you seem to run different than the other 3000-metre runners; you should try the 800-metres, so I said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it,’ so that’s how I got into it.”

Craig won gold in the 800-metre at the District level and followed it up with a gold at CWOSSA.

At OFSAA West, he finished fourth to qualify to go to Ottawa.

“I like running the 800-metres because I know it’s only two laps,” Craig said. “I know as soon as I’m done that first lap, it almost feels like it’s faster than your normal pace. You set your pace, but then I know in the second lap I can go faster.”

Craig said that it was a daunting experience because he knew he would be up against the best athletes in the province, but he had confidence in his ability and said it was very exciting to compete at that level.

Unfortunately, Craig became ill with a fever and other symptoms the morning they were heading to Ottawa for the competition.

Despite feeling under the weather, Craig still ran his race.

“I knew that if I went, there’s no point in not running,” Craig said. “I thought I might as well try and see how I do.”

He didn’t do his best and said he knew he could have done better if he was healthy.

As a Grade 10 student, Craig has two more years to return to competition.

“To get an individual medal at the provincial level is a really difficult thing to do,” said ODSS coach Rob Berg. “I was confident in both of these guys. I thought both of them could make the final, and if they had a good race, both could probably [win a] medal. Craig still did his race and ran faster than any other person from ODSS. That’s pretty tenacious of him to give it his all even though he wasn’t feeling well.”

After posting such great results this year, both Keltrick and Craig can look forward to getting even better on the track over the next two seasons.

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