Hay River was well represented at the NWT Cross-Country Championships in Fort Providence on Oct. 4.
And when all of the running was done, one of the Hay River schools – Ecole Boreale – walked away with the banner for accumulating the most total points.
"What that says is that you get a certain amount of points for first, second and third place in each different category," explained Shelley Maher, the coach of the younger students from Ecole Boreale. "So they've got from mites and tykes up to the senior categories. For each category, you get a certain amount of points for each medal. And so we just had the most points for medals."
She said the Ecole Boreale team was ecstatic about winning the banner.
Maher coached the primary students aged from five to 11 years from Ecole Boreale, while the older students were coached by Declan Munro, a Grade 11 student at the school.
Ecole Boreale sent 23 runners to the event.
There were a record-breaking 173 students from 15 schools in the southern part of the NWT participating at this year's championships.
Maher said it was a team effort by Ecole Boreale to win the banner among so many schools.
"We really only had five practices," she noted. "So we can't attribute it to a huge amount of training or practices. There just seems to be a really big interest in that age category at Ecole Boreale in athletics in general."
Thorsten Gohl, one of the organizers of the championships, said it was a fantastic event.
"Such an amazing event for our community, for our school and our kids in the North," said Gohl, who is the physical literacy co-ordinator with the Dehcho Divisional Education Council. "That is what it is all about – creating opportunities; motivating building confidence to be active for life; seeing kids on the sideline, cheering on their teammates, but also for other teams; supporting them to make it to the finish line. Beautiful to watch, amazing to be part of."
The banner for the aggregate winning team went to St. Patrick High School of Yellowknife.
For the aggregate banner, the top 10 finishers in each division earned points toward their team total. Once the races were completed, the total number of points for each team was divided by the number of athletes on that team to determine the aggregate.
The NWT Cross-Country Championships were held this year after a one-year break.
Gohl said it appears people missed the event because it was the biggest one ever this year.
- with files from James McCarthy