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Pan American Cross-Country Cup Preview

A large contingent of Canadian runners are in Venezuela right now for Friday's Pan American Cross-Country Cup.

March 3, 2016
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Credit: Michael P Hall
Credit: Michael P Hall

Update: According to Athletics Canada, Rachel Hannah and Cleo Boyd will not be competing in the senior women’s race. Danielle Joissnet has been added to the junior women’s race in place of Hannah Bennison.

Believe it or not, in the midst of indoor track season, for some athletes, it’s still cross-country time. The Pan American Cross-Country Cup is set to take place in Venezuela on March 4 and Canada is sending forth a strong team to contend for the title.

This is only the second year that the event has taken place; last year was the inaugural event, taking place in Colombia. Last year’s Canadian team fared well, with Justyn Knight winning the junior men’s race, Rachel Hannah placing third in the senior women’s race and Hannah Woodhouse and Branna McDougall taking second and third, respectively, in the junior women’s race.

Details

Live results can be found here. Races start at 8 a.m. and end at 12 noon local time.

Senior men, senior women: 10K
Junior men: 8K
Junior women: 6K

Full start list

The team was selected based on the results at the National XC Championships, which took place in Kingston, Ont. at the end of the November. Kingston is set to host the event each year until 2018.

Check out the team below.

Junior women

Jennie Baragar-Petrash

Winnipeg runner Baragar-Petrash is no rookie when it comes to Pan Am XC, having raced to 11th place finish last year when the race took place in Barranquilla, Columbia. She also competed in the IAAF World Cross Country Championships in Guiyang, China last year. A strong fourth place finish at XC Nats secured her the opportunity to compete for Canada once again.

Hannah Bennison

Hannah Bennison takes the women’s junior title at #ACXC

A photo posted by Athletics Canada (@athleticscanada) on

Bennison placed first at XC Nationals, with a decisive 20 second lead over her next closest competitor. Hailing from Vernon, B.C. Bennison is a rising star on the trails and on the track. Last June she bested the 31-year-old B.C. high school record for the 3,000m.

Hiley Dobbs

hiley dobbs

Dobbs, who finished seventh at XC Nationals and fourth at OFSAA, has signed to compete at the University of Nevada next year.

Madeleine Ghazarian

Ghazarian won the OFSAA XC Championships in the fall and then went on two take the silver medal at XC Nationals in Kingston. The eleventh grade athlete at Preston High School in Cambridge, Ont. has demonstrated that she’s ready to roll in Venezuela, running a 1,500m PB of 4:34 recently.

Branna MacDougall

MacDougall placed fifth at the National XC Championships in Kingston on her home course. She is very fit right now, coming off of a stellar 9:20:87 3,000m at Ottawa’s Last Chance meet last week. The grade twelve student has signed with Iowa State University for the upcoming academic year. This is not MacDougall’s first Pan Am XC experience, she doesn’t think the novelty can ever wear off: “Representing Canada is such an honour, and its such an amazing feeling to wear the maple leaf on my chest.”

Christina Sevsek

Christina Sevsek

Sevsek finished 6th at Nationals to earn a spot on Team Canada. She was the youth girls champion in 2014. Sevsek placed second at the B.C. Cross-Country Championships this past fall.

Junior Men

Nickolas Colyn

nickolas colyn

The Trinity-Western University runner placed 8th at Nationals. 

Ehab El-Sandali
el-sandali
Credit: Maxine Gravina

El-Sandali of Toronto was the Junior Men XC National Champion, capturing the title with a time of 25:07.9 for 8K. He placed fourth at OFSAA XC this past fall.

Cameron Linscott

cameron linscott

Linscott, of Kingston, Ont., finished second at nationals, while racing on familiar turf. Linscott is a back-to-back OFSAA XC Champion in 2014 and 2015, despite the fact that a stress-fracture in his left femur diagnosed in June, took him out for the entire track season.

In a conversation with Canadian Running, Linscott claimed to be happy with his training leading up to the event. The only factor that is daunting to him and the res of the Canadian athletes is that, “the heat is going to be a bit of physical shock, but we’ve been given great instructions by the coaching staff on how to prepare for it.” Regardless of the temperatures though, Linscott is confident that this is a team that is going to “prove yet again what we Canadians can do on the cross country course.”

Riley Tell
Credit: Peter Stokes
Credit: Peter Stokes

Whitby-based Tell finished fourth at XC Nationals. He took the silver medal at OFSAA XC in the fall, finishing just after his now-teammate, Cameron Linscott.

Mitchell Ubene

Ubene finished 7th at Nationals to secure a spot on the Pan Am squad.

Benjamin Workman

Credit: The Kingston Whig

Workman was named OUA Rookie of the Year, for a stellar XC season with the Guelph Gryphons. The above is a photo of Cameron Linscott and Ben Workman, who finished first and third at OFSAA XC in 2014, embracing at the finish line. Friends since public school, they will reunite to compete in Venezuela.

Senior Women

Cleo Boyd

news-cleo-boyd

Boyd finished 9th at XC Nationals in her hometown of Kingston, ON. Boyd currently runs for the University of Virginia. She placed 67th at the NCAA Championships this past fall.

Lisa Brooking

Formerly a CIS all-Canadian with the University of Windsor Lancers, Brooking, an Orillia, Ont. native, now attends Trinity Western University in Langley, B.C. and competed for the Spartans this past fall. At the Canadian university championships in Guelph, Ont. she added a third all-Canadian honour to her resume finishing seventh and helping the Spartans to a second place team finish. She ran unattached at the Canadian senior cross-country championships and secured her Pan Am spot with a tenth place finish.

Laura Desjardins

Happy to be on this team. Thankful for all the important people in my life who care and support me <3

A photo posted by Laura (@ldesjardins412) on

A sixth place finish at the Canadian 5K Championships in September, Desjardins, a member of the Newmarket Huskies, continued her late 2015 success by finishing seventh at the senior cross-country championships.

Sasha Gollish

Gollish finished 5th at XC Nationals to snag a spot on the National XC Team for the first time. While this may be Gollish’s first time on the Nats XC team, she is accustomed to high stakes, racing to a bronze medal in the 1500m at the Pan Am Games in Toronto this past summer. She was named “One to Watch” by the Canadian Association for the Advancement of Women and Sport and Physical Activity in January of this year. Gollish is completing her PhD in Engineering, volunteers with Fast and Female and serves as the Safety and Advocacy Director for the Morning Glory Cycling Club.

Rachel Hannah

Hannah raced to what appeared to be a fourth place finish in the marathon at the Toronto Pan Am Games this past summer. Months later, she was upgraded to the bronze medal after Gladys Tejeda of Peru was stripped of her gold medal for failing a doping test during the games. The Pan Am marathon was only Hannah’s second time racing the marathon. Hannah competed in the 2013 and 2015 IAAF World Cross-Country Championships and won the Canadian Cross-Country Championships in 2014, marking her as a skilled competitor over difficult terrain. She is also a registered dietician and is working towards a diploma in sports nutrition.

Julie-Anne Staehli

Julie-Anne is currently a fourth year student at Queen’s University in Kingston, where she has captained the XC team for the past two years. She finished eighth at XC Nationals (making the first student-athlete to cross the finish line). She will begin her Master’s in sports psychology at Queen’s next year.

Senior Men

Ryan Cassidy

The Grande-Digue, N.B. native who completed his fifth and final cross-country season with the University of Victoria Vikes this past fall, Cassidy finished seventh to qualify for the Pan American Cross-Country Cup team. He finished fifth at the earlier Canadian university championships and helped Victoria to the team win. In addition the Pan Am Cup he is set to compete at this month’s World university championships in Italy.

Evan Esselink

Esselink is coming off a victory at the Re-Fridgee-Eighter 8K in Waterloo, Ont. winning in 23:42. The former Indiana University standout finished second at the Canadian 5K Championships (14:19) and ran 1:04:52 for the half-marathon in November three weeks before qualifying for Team Canada with a tenth place finish at the Canadian cross-country championships.

Nicholas Falk

Falk placed ninth at XC Nationals, running the 10K race in 30:18.9. The former University of Windsor Lancer athlete first represented Canada at the 19th FISU World University Cross-Country Championships in Entebbe, Uganda in 2014. He was an all-Canadian and an all-Ontario athlete while attending school in Windsor, Ont.

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