Edwin Parr Composite and Boyle Schools both had competitors in the 2016 ASAA Cross Country Provincial Championships in Cochrane, but it was two girls from the former who dominated in the races.
EPC’s Kelcie Bulas nabbed the 12th spot in the senior girls four-kilometre race with a time of 11:11.81, while Anna MacIsaac-Jones landed in 15th in the junior girls three-kilometre with 18:26.48.
“We finished fourth in the province for 3A,” said EPC coach Wade Hicks in an interview following the races. “We still had a really good showing. I think we were hoping to place top three, but we ran into some pretty strong teams this year. Fourth is nothing to be too upset about – finishing fourth in the province is still pretty amazing.”
Last year, EPC won provincials and for the last six years, they’ve come in first at the North-Central Zones.
“We’ve been in that top few teams pretty regularly over the last few years,” Hicks said. “We’ve had some really nice runners coming through our program and it’s starting to grow.”
EPC had 25 athletes at provincials this year to compete in what Hicks called a difficult course.
“It was also hard, too, because it was a very wide-open course,” he said. “You could see every runner that was on that race and I think for some kids that was fairly daunting for them, the fact that you could literally see where you were. If you were in 60th spot, you could see the other 60 runners in front of you.”
It also probably did not help that the team missed the course walkthrough on Friday, the result of heavy snowfall affecting their travel time.
Nevertheless, Hicks was proud of what his team accomplished.
“We had three runners off of our team from last year that got scouted for college and university running, so that’s kind of nice,” he said. “We’re hoping for a couple more this year to get scouted for running. Kelcie, obviously – that’s really what one of her goals is. She really wants to go on and run when she goes to university and she’s a very driven kid, I know she’ll do quite well when she leaves Edwin Parr.”
They might not have placed in the top 20 in their categories, but four runners from Boyle School gave it their all at provincials, perhaps none more so than Emma Sachko, who placed 90th in the junior girls division.
“I think her time was 14:04,” said her father Troy Sachko. “We were really happy with her time there.”
Troy said Emma was happy with the time, too.
“She worked pretty hard,” he said. “She was obviously pretty tired and worn out at the end of it but as far as compared to zones, it’s a much bigger meet. There were a lot of kids there. It was my first experience being at provincials for cross-country too and I was amazed at just the sheer number of kids who were there. Just in junior girls alone i think there were over 100 competitors.”
