13 members of the St. Timothy's Thunder Junior High School Cross Country team qualified for the Calgary City Meet of Champions at the Calgary Catholic School Division's Divisional qualifier on Tuesday, September 26th.

Coach Travis Cummings says the 13 runners who all finished in the top ten in their events to qualify for the meet in Calgry is a record for the school.  

"It was impressive.  The grade nine girls went first and second, Darci (Petersen) and Grace (Boston) went gold and silver.  Darci won her race in a blow out.  Miranda (Hobbs) and Emily Carvalho were fifth and sixth and the grade eight girls swept the podium."

Holly Moore also ran away with the grade eight race according to Cummings.  Sofia Preece took the silver while Makenna Myatt took bronze.  

Allison Bentley rounded out the top ten girl's results by placing 6th overall in the grade seven girls race and also punching her ticket to the Meet of Champions.

Among grade nine boys, St. Tim's runners finished second, third and seventh.  Liam McCullough won silver with the bronze going to Alex Aguilar.  Their teammate Lucas Rott came seventh.  

Ethan Horb ran a solid race and won the gold medal among grade seven boys.  Trenton Spaderman followed in the footsteps of his older siblings Brenek and Mikenna, both standout athletes for the St. Tim's High School cross country squad, with a debut 6th place finish.  

Cummings, a former varsity runner in the CIS has built the St. Tim's cross country program for the past eight years, to the point where students come to the school because they want to run.  "They get good quality coaching, not just from myself but we have lots of parent volunteers who are some pretty high level athletes that help out and we get lots of support from the staff.  It's kind of built itself up over the past couple of years to the point we're at now,"

Cummings says the fact that St. Timothy's is a junior / senior high school helps out.  "You get to coach kids for so long, I've coached kids from grade seven to grade 12 and that continuity makes a huge, huge difference."

The Calgary City Meet of Champions goes Thursday, October 5th at Ascension of Our Lord School and Cummings is looking for some good results.

"These guys are all running fast in junior high but they're training with the high school team so they get that advantage."

The school has some other cross country meets on the horizon.  The junior high team will be attending the Athletics Alberta provincial championships on November 4th in Wetaskiwin where the midget girls will be out to defend and improve on their provincial silver medal from 2016.  

For the high school team, the Calgary City Championships are set for October 11th and will be held in Cochrane at the Ag Grounds.

The ASAA Provincial Championships go October 21st in Edmonton. 

St. Tim's grade 12 runner Josh Novak won the gold medal at a league meet at Prairie Winds Park in Calgary on Wednesday from among 112 racers.  Cummings hopes to qualify five or six high school racers for provincials and build on their three straight silver medals.