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Gold and gratitude on cross-country
trails
Due to pandemic protocols, you are racing 'ghosts,'
one runner notes
Ben
Leeson
Published on: October 28, 2020 |
Calum Passi and Matthew
Smith had start times roughly an hour apart, yet were
still nearly neck and neck atop the SDSSAA cross-country
championship leaderboard on Wednesday.
Passi, a Lasalle Secondary
standout, won the senior boys’ 4.3-kilometre
race, contested at Kivi Park in Sudbury, with a time
of 14:12. Smith, a late-blooming Confederation Secondary
School representative, was only a few seconds slower,
crossing the finish line in 14:18.
Kendyn Mashinter, from
powerhouse Lo-Ellen Park, was not far off the pace,
finishing third in 14:35.
Like all high school
cross-country races this season, Wednesday’s
event was run in waves, rather than with a mass start,
in keeping with COVID-19 protocols. Entrants and officials
agreed that times would be kept secret until everyone
had finished.
“It felt really
good, honestly, a lot of fun,” said Passi, 17,
a Grade 12 student at Lasalle. “It was definitely
a challenging course, as always in Sudbury. Whether
at Laurentian or at Kivi, you can count on the hills,
for sure.”
Well-acquainted with
high-level competition, having medalled at the city,
regional and even provincial levels during an illustrious
high school career, Passi enjoys being pushed by his
peers. So this year’s SDSSAA championships,
which also served as the season finale, presented
a different kind of challenge.
“I love having
other racers beside me, for sure,” said the
Grade 12 student. “You definitely feed off of
other competitors and it’s a different atmosphere,
I would say, when you’re mass starting together,
boxing each other out. Those strategies definitely
come into play a lot more.”
Running solo, however,
still required a great deal of fortitude, both physical
and mental.
“You have to be
desperate out there,” Passi said. “You
know these guys have run fantastic times, that Kendyn
and Matthew both ran fantastic times, the mindset
going into it is to push yourself, to not take breaks.
When you’re running by yourself, running time
trials, you can have mental lapses, but you can’t
afford that when you’re competing against these
high-level guys.
“You have to run
with that in mind — even thought they’re
not beside you, you’re racing their ghosts.
You have to stay mentally focused and keep pushing
every step of the way.”
Smith didn’t mind
the change. Indeed, the 17-year-old speedster found
the extra space, and the chance to focus on his own
performance, to be rather refreshing.
“You can just focus
on doing your best, rather than matching somebody
else’s,” said the 12th-grader, who won
a preliminary race at Naughton Trails last week. “It’s
definitely a mental game, because there’s nobody
there, so for sure, it’s a lot of self-discipline.”
Smith’s success
is all the more impressive considering he’s
a relative newcomer to the cross-country ranks. An
accomplished athlete and a longtime basketball player,
he didn’t start racing competitively until last
season.
“When I started,
I had no idea what I was doing,” he said with
a laugh. “I just decided to go out there and
run, and it turned out I had a talent for it. I guess
I had good conditioning from other sports.”
He gives credit to coaches
Stephane Jacques and Dan Whalen and fellow runners
such as Ian MacKenzie for helping transform his raw
ability into more refined technique, and to his friends
at SneakerWorks Customs for their ongoing support.
“I have a lot of
these guys to look up to, giving me good role models,”
said Smith, who has begun to consider pursuing the
sport, in one form or another, at the post-secondary
level.
“If I go to university,
I might look into joining a team. I don’t know
if I’ll go for running, but it might be something
I’ll want to do while I’m there. It’s
something I have been thinking about a lot. It’s
one of those things that grew on me and I’m
thinking about doing something bigger, like maybe
a marathon or something.”
Despite all the changes
and delays, the athletes were grateful for a chance
to compete this season, knowing that theirs was one
of only two high school athletic associations, along
with Thunder Bay, to stage fall any sports this year.
“Great gratitude,
I would say,” Passi said. “You definitely
appreciate it more. A lot of kids didn’t get
this, so I feel like I was extremely lucky to be able
to do this. The team atmosphere was awesome this year,
I was a little more involved with the school and that
was a lot of fun. Any sports you’re involved
in, you’re going to grow friendships, grow bonds
with each other, you joke around, and even though
you’re in practice, you’re hurting and
your legs are tired, you can still crack jokes and
get through it together.”
Now one of the Lancers’
seasoned veterans, he has taken pride in playing a
leadership role and helping to secure the team’s
legacy following his graduation.
“It’s all
about the program, really, and you want to set a good
example for the younger guys and girls,” Passi
said. “You want to set that visual example so
they know what to do next year. You can say do this,
do that, but when they see you doing it, it’s
easier to follow that example.
“You want to set
a good foundation for what’s expected of our
team, how we carry ourselves and how with act with
each other, how we compete. It doesn’t really
matter how you placed. What we care about is your
effort. At the end of the race, did you know that
your gave it your all? That was something I definitely
wanted to instill in our team this year.”
A post-secondary running
career is certainly in Passi’s plans, as it
was for his brother, Liam, now a member of Laurentian
University’s cross-country and indoor track
teams.
“No decisions are
made yet, but I’m definitely looking to run
varsity at a university,” Calum Passi said.
“There’s applications to be made, but
I’m definitely going to do that soon and to
start talking to coaches. I’m definitely looking
to get to that next level and to compete with those
guys.”
On the senior girls’
front, Lo-Ellen’s Kalila Bachiu finished first
on Wednesday, followed by teammates Chandyn Bachiu
in second and Isabelle Mastroianni in third.
Junior boys were led
by Confederation’s Carson Crane, with the LEP
tandem of Kaeden Ward and Liam Lacroix in second and
third, respectively.
For junior girls, Lo-Ellen’s
Sophia Oommen and Sarah Lanthier finished 1-2, with
Marymount’s Emma Stegmann finishing a close
third.
Lockerby’s Atom
Thususka was first among novice boys, while Owen Dobson
of Lo-Ellen was second and Liam Binks of Lockerby
was third.
Manitoulin was well represented
among novice girls, with Maren Kasunich finishing
first and Mackenzie Green third, with Lauren Pineau
from Lockerby between them.
Riley Cornthwaite and
Brianna Moxam, both from Lasalle, were first and second,
respectively, in the para event.
Lo-Ellen topped the overall
standings, with 28 points compared to Lockerby’s
24 and Marymount’s 20.
For full results from
the SDSSAA championships, including team standings
for each division, visit www.chiptimeresults.com/race-results.
bleeson@postmedia.com
All
Results Here
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