With heavy rainfall warnings posted throughout the Lower Mainland on the weekend, the BC High School Cross Country Championships were a wet affair at Aldergrove Lake Park.
The soggy conditions did not hamper Salmon Arm Secondary’s Glynis Sim, as she claimed top spot in the senior girls’ race.
“It was good – I started a little fast, but it was a pretty good pace, I guess. I tried to stay with the first person most of the time, and I just ended up passing the person in the lead pretty close to the finish. I was only like a second ahead of them.”
Glynis came from behind in the last few hundred metres and held off her competitors to finish the 4.3-kilometre race in 16:13. On the first lap, Sim made a move in the exact same place to claim the lead, but she gave up the lead shortly after. When asked about her move on the first lap, she said, “I felt pretty good so I thought I would go for it.”
From the spectator’s perspective, it appeared she was testing her challengers’ mettle, said Dave Van Bergeyk, Salmon Arm Secondary’s coach.
“She ran that race to perfection,” he said. “Glynis is not just gifted athletically; she is also a really smart runner. We are so happy for her that she achieved this result, especially after she was disappointed with her placing at the Valleys two weeks ago.”
That result was a sixth place in the Okanagan zone race, which Glynis was expected to win.
It was a tough race for her, nonetheless.
“About 800 metres from the finish I started feeling pretty tired, I was thinking pretty negatively,” she says, but she managed to keep pushing herself.
One factor adding to the difficulty was the pouring rain.
“It was pretty gross. I was pretty tired so I didn’t really try to avoid puddles but they were pretty big and muddy and gross.”
Asked about a goal now that she has won the provincial championship, she said: “I guess to be top 10 next year, probably at that race.”
Glynis trains with her sister Emmy, who was the second senior girl runner from Salmon Arm Secondary, finishing in a time of 18:35.56.
Salmon Arm sent both a senior boys and senior girls team to the race in Aldergrove.
The senior boys, who ran a longer 6.3-km route, were led by Jonathan Bakker’s 87th place finish, with the team achieving a strong 12th place out of the 24 teams.
Considering these are all the top teams from the various zones throughout the province, a top-half placing is noteworthy, said Van Bergeyk.
The other boys on the team were John Connor, Alexander Corbett, Andrew Nash, Seth van Varseveld, James Hardy, and Nelson Kleer.
The girls, paced by Glynis’s first place, finished 14th out of 26 teams. The other runners for the girls, along with Emmy Sim, were Lisa Petterson, Taigan Radomske, Jessica Brown, Theresa Thoms and Elena Bruns.