Kevin Nagel Sports Editor sports@oakvillebeaver.com Sports 29 | Friday, June 10, 2016 | OAKVILLE BEAVER | www.insideHALTON.com "Connected to your Community" No track? No problem for King's Christian relay team Cavaliers' coach Adams-Lowe `in awe' after OFSAA gold-medal win in midget girls' 4x100 "We're all athletic," Oriyomi said. "We all play other sports so it's not hard to adjust." Oakville Beaver staff They won the Golden Horseshoe AthLaeticia Amihere took the handoff from Ti- letic Conference meet with a time of 53.80 ena Neale and her competitive instincts took seconds. However, the challenge they faced over. against more experienced teams was driven "If I see anyone in front of me, I just want home at South Regionals, where they finto win," she said. "I knew I could catch ished third despite cutting two seconds off them." their time. Teammates Maddy Bergsma, Mide OriThey remained a long shot for a medal, yomi and Neale had put the relay team's heading into OFSAA as the seventh seed new anchor in position to chase down the with a time of 51.79 seconds. competition. With the crowd roaring, Ami"Personally, I didn't think we were going here passed rivals from a pair to medal," Bergsma said, "but of Brampton schools down our coach was so confident the stretch in the midget girls' that it gave me confidence." 4x100-metre relay. She pulled King's coach Amorel Adaway to stop the clock at 50.76 ams-Lowe thought the team seconds, making King's Chrishad potential to go faster and tian Collegiate the most unshuffled the deck in the week likely Ontario Federation of before the provincial high School Athletic Associations school championships. track and field champions. Bergsma went from anchor It was the Cavaliers' first to leading off, Oriyomi moved OFSAA gold in track and field, from lead to second and Amiwhich shouldn't come as a surTiena Neale here went from second to anCavaliers' relay runner chor while Neale remained in prise considering the school doesn't even have a track. the third spot. The team practised at nearby In the OFSAA preliminaries, racing in the Loyola but only when they could fit it in same heat as Windsor's Sandwich, the provaround their other sporting pursuits. ince's top-ranked team, King's Christian con"Maybe once a week," said Amihere, who tinued to reward its coach's faith, knocking joined the Canadian cadet women's basket- another second off the time. The Cavaliers ball team following OFSAA to prepare for posted the best qualifying time, 50.82, beworlds. coming just the second team in the province But the lack of practices and the fact that to break the 51-second mark this year. none of them compete for a track club didn't Competing in the 100m at GHAC, Bergsslow down the Cavs' relay team. ma and Oriyomi had posted times of 13.32 By Herb Garbutt It's a team, so you don't want to let each other down. King's Christian Collegiate's midget girls' 4x100-metre relay team (from left, Laeticia Amihere, Maddy Bergsma, Tiena Neale and Mide Oriyomi) won OFSAA gold in Windsor. Dropping more than three seconds off their time in a matter of weeks, they won with a time of 50.76 seconds. | photo submitted and 13.39 respectively. To break 51 seconds, all four runners had to average 12.75. "It's a team, so you don't want to let each other down," Neale said. "I think we pushed a lot harder than we would have as individuals." "I've run many 100m races where I could have run faster," Amihere said, "but I didn't have that push. We all wanted to win so badly. We had that willingness to push." Meanwhile, the only other team to run a sub-51 this year, Sandwich, was disqualified. With the team presented this golden op- Loyola's Noel, OT's Don-Wauchop just miss podium at OFSAA track With two rounds remaining, eight centimetres was all that separated Tamia Noel from the OFSAA podium. The Loyola student had already produced two throws of 11.96 metres or better. With her second last attempt in the junior girls' shot put, she crept a little closer to Bernice Ediagbonya, topping the 12-m mark, hitting 12.02. That still left her three centimetres short of the bronze-medal position. Ediagonya would remove any doubt on her final attempt, though, delivering a throw of 12.54m to secure the bronze. Noel held on for a fourth-place finish at OFSAA. She also turned in a 15th-place finish in the junior girls' discus. Also narrowly missing out on the podium was Oakville-Trafalgar's Rachel Don-Wauchop, who finished fourth in the midget girls' 3,000m in a race that saw the OFSAA record fall. Don-Wauchop cut more than 40 seconds off her winning time from the South Regional meet, finishing in 10:24.25, less than five seconds behind the bronze medallist. St. Thomas Aquinas' Isabella Carunna made the junior girls' 100m final, placing eighth in a time of 13.00 seconds. Carunna earned the final spot in the final by a hundredth of a second. She qualified in 12.56 seconds, but wind slowed the times in the final. · Vahaab Ladha, Garth Webb (10th, midget boys' 400m) · Yihang Qin, Abbey Park (11th, junior boys' triple jump; 12th, long jump) · Nicole Parsons, AP (11th, junior girls' 300m hurdles; 16th, 400m) · Melissa Langegger, AP (12th, senior girls' triple jump; 17th, long jump) · Julia Scott, Taja McLean, Kaleigh Jeffrey, Zaria Armstrong, T.A. Blakelock (13th, senior girls' 4x100m relay · Jordan Mabbott, AP (14th, senior boys' 400m hurdles; 19th, 400m) · Posey O'Keefe (15th, midget girls' 800m) · Bridget Ball, Iroquois Ridge (15th, junior girls' 3,000m) · Alex Hurd, TAB (16th, midget girls' 200m) · Darena Choliy, Loyola (17th, junior girls' 300m hurdles) · Jonathan Reid, GW (19th, senior boys' javelin) · Julia Scott, TAB (20th, senior girls' high jump) Other results from the OFSAA meet included: portunity, Adams-Lowe provided a little more motivation. Oriyomi, Amihere and Neale were all a part of King's Christian's OFSAA champion basketball team in November. "You could win two OFSAA golds in one year," the coach told them. Suddenly, not only was gold attainable, but the relay members began setting their sights even higher. "As a team, I thought we could run better than 50 seconds," Oriyomi said of a time that would begin to approach the OFSAA record of 49.36. In the final, the foursome easily outdistanced St. Edmund Campion (51.47) and St. Roch (51.51) -- the two teams that beat the Cavs at South Regionals -- by almost threequarters of a second. "As a team, we're really proud to set a record for the school and to win OFSAA and put our school out there," Oriyomi said. "We're a small school and not a lot of people know our school," Amihere said. "Not a lot of people were expecting our school to do that." Even the one person who believed it was possible before the runners themselves could hardly contain herself as they crossed the line first. "Oh my gosh, I was like a little child. I was all giggly," Adams-Lowe said. "It was crazy. I'm still in awe of what they did."