Rattlers preparing for x-country nationals

By JAMES TUBB on November 9, 2022.

jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb

The little bit of snow in Medicine Hat has is not concerning to Medicine Hat College Rattlers cross country coach Bill Corcoran mere days before they host the national XC championships this weekend.

The coach has seen it all before, being a part of 20 national cross country events over the last 21 years.

“I’ve seen a lot of stuff over the years, I’ve hosted twice and both times in the snow,” Corcoran said. “From 2012 to 2018 I was the national convenor, which is like the commissioner for the sport in Canada. I’ve been involved with these in one form or another for the last 20 years, I’ve seen a lot of things go sideways in that time. I’d like to think that we’ve got most of our ducks in a row.”

The MHC campus will be full of runners starting Thursday afternoon as athletes from across the country gather for practice runs ahead of Saturday’s races. Corcoran says they took a side-by-side with a plow to scrape the track around the college on Tuesday in preparation for the weekend. Both CCAA championships Corcoran hosted in Grande Prairie (2007, 2019) were snow covered, so this truly is nothing new. He says the weather could be a benefit to the Alberta runners.

“Any given year you can have two or three meets where you have snow on the ground so we’re used to it, not so much from Ontario, Quebec and the Maritimes,” Corcoran said. “On a record, Alberta tends to do very well at these championships to begin with, even more so when we actually host. Part of it’s the weather and the other part is the altitude as well.”

He says he’s excited for the city and college to be on display this weekend.

“It’s a lot of stress and a lot of work into it but when the athletes start arriving here from all over the country and I can see how excited they are, a lot of these kids have never been certainly out west, so it’s a big deal for them,” Corcoran said. “It’s kind of a big deal for us, we’ve got 45 schools from across the country coming to an institution of our size. That’s a really, really, big deal and for a town our size as well. It’s nice to host a national event.”

The Rattlers women’s team earned its spot in nationals with an ACAC win on Oct. 29 and the men’s team qualified as a host squad.

“We have a relatively young and competitive team, particularly on the women’s side. I’m very excited to see how they do against the Ontario and Quebec teams because being able to win Alberta was certainly a nice surprise,” Corcoran said. “As I have said, Alberta usually does fairly well in this particular meet so I’m excited to see how the women’s team does against the other teams. For the guys team, we have a lot of guys back from last year, so I’m just excited to see how improved they will have been from their outing last year.”

The Women’s 6K race gets underway Saturday at noon and the men’s 8K gets started at 1 p.m. Ahead of those races, they are hosting 3K and 6K community races at 9:30 a.m. which still have open slots interested runners can register for. Anyone interested can register at racepro.ca by end of day Wednesday.

“Hopefully the weather will be good and it’s really helpful for the local people to have a bunch of screaming idiots out there,” Corcoran joked. “Just getting people out there excited for the Rattlers. We can do it for basketball or volleyball, so why not for running.”

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