SCARBOROUGH, Ont. - For a second straight season the Sheridan Bruins men's cross country team claimed an OCAA bronze medal, while the women were fifth, marking their best result at the OCAA Championship since 1989.
"I'm extremely excited about placing third for a second year in a row," head coach Danny Webster said. "Alex Ball had the race of his life and I was hoping we could move up to second, but Fanshawe was really tough today."
The Bruins 66 points was enough to edge out Mohawk with 67 - despite the Mountaineers having the individual gold and bronze medalists - and was just behind Fanshawe who scored 55. St. Clair had all four scoring runners inside the top-10 to claim their first championship since 1990.
Cole Bond was named to the All-Ontario team for a second straight year, finishing 10th in a time of 27:54.1, and was followed by Cameron Ross (14th, 28:25.4), Alex Ball (19th, 28:50.3), and Andrew Convery (23rd, 29:14.1). The performance of the team was so consistent that including the displacers - Matthew Reeve (31st, 29:46.0) and Quinn Middleton (32nd, 29:46.0) - the Bruins had the second lowest cumulative time of 2:53:56.2.
"Our depth is what makes us such a strong team," Webster said. "If one guy is having a bad day, we have another two or three that will fill in for him."
The women's team scored 90 points, one back of Mohawk for fourth and seven back of silver-medalists Humber and bronze-medalists Laurier-Brantford who each scored 83.
"This was by far our best race of the season and we improved by two places from last year," Webster said. "With the way we keep improving this year, I truly believe we can be one of the top-three teams from Ontario by the time we run nationals."
Olivia Sidock also made the All-Ontario team with a ninth-place finish (24:57.4), while Yonta Gillespie (21st, 26:36.8), Erin Kinninmont (28th, 27:03.1), and Marla Brown (32nd, 27:08.2) rounded out the scoring for the Double Blue.
Similar to the performance of the men's team, consistency and depth were on display as the Bruins produced the third-fastest cumulative time (2:42:45.6) when factoring in all six runners, with Lexy Pakenham-Troth (39th, 28:05.8) and Isabel Catali (45th, 28:54.0) completing the Sheridan lineup.
Both men's and women's team qualify for the CCAA National Championship, hosted by Seneca College on Nov. 10.
Blue notes: The bronze brings the all-time medal haul of the men's team to seven (three gold, two silver, two bronze) and they have won medals in back-to-back seasons for the second team in team history after winning gold and silver in 1988-89.