Steeplechase athletes set sights on OFSAA

“I wanted a change from just running around the track all the time,” explains Grade 12 student Nicole Francki, who took to the new discipline along with several other Ottawa Lions clubmates. “It’s weird, but I liked it.”

The most challenging part of the race without a doubt is the one high hurdle of the four that has the water pit after it, which is especially unpleasant on cold mornings when the water is even colder. The jump can be intimidating, Francki notes, such as one time when she hesitated in deciding which leg to take off with and wound up having to essentially pull herself over the hurdle.

“That’s the worst that’s ever happened to me, and I want it to stay like that – no wipeouts or belly-flops or anything like that,” laughs Francki, who finished behind Colonel By’s Rachelle Beanlands and one spot ahead of Gloucester’s Vanessa Cojbasin at the east meet.

Francki’s steeplechase experience has been overwhelmingly positive due to the fact that she got to go to the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations (OFSAA) championships last year, made the final and set a personal-best time en route to a top-10 finish in the province.

Scott Bergeron, Francki’s male counterpart at Sir Wil, hopes to find a similar type of avenue to OFSAA in his final year of high school, and he got off to a great start by winning the east race by over 35 seconds in his first attempt at the event in high school.

“The best training is just to do the race a few times,” Bergeron notes. “Pretty much the first race everyone has, they will fall in the water pit and probably get injured at some point. It’s trial and error and they end up getting it right.”