NEWS PHOTO JAMES TUBB
Medicine Hat College Rattlers runner Becky Ross runs down a hill in her first lap of her 6km run Saturday afternoon during the CCAA national cross-country championships hosted at the college.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Becky Ross capped off her first season of competitive running on the biggest stage.
The 35-year-old Medicine Hat College Rattlers runner placed sixth in the CCAA national cross-country championships hosted in Medicine Hat on Saturday, to go along with her ACAC rookie of the year award and all-conference runner.
“It’s kind of surreal,” Ross said after her 6 km race Saturday. “I’m just along for a ride on this thing, I know I jumped on the boat to run just for fun, so I didn’t even think about provincials or nationals.”
The Rattlers women’s team, coming off a provincial gold, finished in sixth place at nationals. Their men’s team finished in 15th. Cross-country coach Bill Corcoran said he was proud of both Rattlers’ teams.
“Everybody on the women’s team ran their best race of the year, we just got beat by some better teams out of Quebec,” Corcoran said. “It’s a source of pride, even if you’re the first Alberta team at nationals, or you can beat the Ontario champion, that was pretty good.
“Same as the women’s team, the men had their best race or near their best race. All year, we went in ranked 14th and we ended up finishing 15th.”
The runners from the 18 different schools competing battled the snow-brushed track and winter air. Ross says she runs in the winter regularly but donned spikes for the first time to combat the track.
“It was pretty good, your traction is definitely not quite the same, but I just look at it as I like the differences,” Ross said. “I like when things are different because it gives you a different challenge, a different skill to hone. It was a little slippy in some parts, but nothing where I ever lost my footing. I like it when things are different because if it was the same all the time it would be boring.”
Corcoran says the level of improvement both teams had over the season was amazing.
“The guys were over shadowed by the women this year but they were way better than they were last year. Last year it was really to have two teams, and we’d finished sixth in the ACAC. The women were last at nationals, the guys were second last at nationals, we were just kind of happy to be there,” Corcoran said. “This year, they were actually starting to compete, in particular the women. We created better runners and then the runners we had from last year, they all improved, as well.”
Makenna Fitzgerald of the SAIT Trojans was the women’s 6 km gold medalist and Les Élans de Garneau from Quebec was the women’s team champions.
In the men’s 8 km race, Nolan Turgeon of the Victoriaville Vulkins was the gold medalist and the SAIT Trojans were the men’s team champions.
Corcoran was also honoured over the weekend, being named national coach of the year weeks after getting the provincial honour. It’s an award he was honoured to receive.
“I was really happy that the CCAA recognizes all of the hard work we’ve done here in Medicine Hat, and it’s really a team effort,” Corcoran said. “It’s the great support from athletics, the great support from the clubs in the area as well. People like Darryl Smith and Sean Freeman are just awesome people to work. So sure, I got the award but it really takes a community to build a program.”
His award was handed out at the banquet hosted at the Medicine Hat Lodge later Saturday. It was there Terry Ballard, the MHC manager of athletics and recreation, announced Dalhousie Agricultural Campus as the 2023 CCAA cross-country national championship hosts.
Ballard says Saturday was an incredible environment from start to finish and was proud of the work the college and its volunteers did while hosting teams from across the country.
“It did take a year to plan and people don’t see that, so our staff did a commendable job,” Ballard said on Sunday. “We had 100 volunteers and the sponsors were outstanding. To see it happen, we got a lot of accolades last night after it was over. A lot of emails this morning from people, so that’s rewarding. We were just trying to do our part to make the college proud and make the city proud, and I think we did that yesterday.”
Here are the Rattlers results at Nationals:
Women’s 6km
7th Becky Ross
21st Madison Scrimger
49th Cheldynn Molnar
82nd Pyper Gill
111th Annika Marshall
The Rattlers women’s team finished sixth.
Men’s 8km
63rd Brannon Sumner
66th Jaiden Romanuik
88th Gage Smith
95th Harrison Lawson
100th Carson Schiller
105th Justin Jager
The Rattlers men’s team finished 15th.
