Cross-Country Team Opens with McGill Meet
Three Stingers Make Top 11 in Respective Categories
Concordia’s cross-country men claimed third place and the women claimed seventh for their collective efforts in the McGill Open Meet on Saturday at Mount Royal Park.
“I was really impressed because we didn’t run four of our top seven women,” said coach John Lofranco, who used Saturday’s meet to decipher which runners would be considered for his final roster.
There were over 400 athletes who participated in the meet, which is open to universities, CEGEPs and high schools, and serves as a good opportunity for university teams to scout runners in the area. Nineteen teams took part on the men’s side and 16 on the women’s.
Stingers rookie and former Champlain College runner Coralina Tse finished ahead of 179 other runners for 11th place in the women’s 4-km run, while veterans Ryan Noel Hodge and Stephane Colle finished fourth and ninth respectively out of 229 in the men’s 6 km.
“I was expecting to be in the top five, but I’m not disappointed with this,” said Colle, who missed most of last season due to injury. “Ryan and I wanted to take out the last 2 kms harder, just to get a feel of the pressure for the [coming] season.”
“I was expecting to be in the top five, but I’m not disappointed with this. Ryan and I wanted to take out the last two kilometres harder, just to get a feel of the pressure for the [coming] season,”
—Stephane Colle,
Men’s cross-country
When asked about her first experience racing with a university team, Tse said, “It’s a whole different feeling to what I’m used to. Everything is more competitive, but in a fun way. We’ve been training together for two weeks, maybe, so we’re not used to the hills and not used to the change from gravel to grass.”
Among those missing for Concordia were Dominique Roy, captain Kelly Hewitt and Amanda Weightman. Megan Anderson, of Cowichan, B.C., ran as an unattached runner but should be on Concordia’s roster by the end of the week.
The cross-country team will put training on hold this Saturday as special guest and 1500-meter world record holder Hicham El Guerrouj is scheduled to speak at Concordia. On Sunday, the team will get acquainted with the course at Centre de la Nature in Laval—the 2010 site for the provincial championships.“I have an advantage over everybody because I’ve ran that course twice already in CEGEP,” said Tse. “The course is tougher than this one, but it should be fun to see how everyone else takes it.”
The next competitive meet for Lofranco’s team takes place on Oct. 9 at Université de Laval, with the men and women competing in eight km and four km runs, respectively.
This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 06, published September 21, 2010.
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