Home > The Scene

Cameron Ormond’s OFSAA XC hat-trick puts her a win away from history

The 16-year-old Aurora High School student has never lost an OFSAA provincial cross-country race

Cameron Ormond
Cameron Ormond
Photo: Cameron Ormond/Instagram.

Multiple-time Olympian Kathy Butler is the only runner to have won four OFSAA girls cross-country championships, a feat she accomplished in the late-80s and early-90s, that’s gone unmatched ever since.

Aurora High School’s Cameron Ormond is one win away from matching that mark, in a fashion never done before. After winning OFSAA gold at the provincial championships last Saturday, Ormond has won back-to-back-to-back titles, a hat trick, and has a chance to go four for four in 2018, a feat (winning four in a row) only accomplished by Kevin Sullivan. (Butler won four titles in five years during a time, Sullivan too, when the Ontario curriculum was five years.)

Ormond, a Grade 11 student in Aurora, Ont., says she only realized that no other female has won four consecutive OFSAA cross-country championships, one of the largest provincial or state meets in North America, after last Saturday’s race, which went off in Petawawa, located about two hours northwest of Ottawa.

“It was surprising but it got me optimistic,” she says. “I’m hoping to win again next year and be the first girl to do that [a four-peat].”

In Petawawa, on what was a rolling and challenging course in cool conditions, racing against runners in Grade 11 and 12 – the senior category – Ormond remained undefeated at the OFSAA cross-country level, winning the 6K in 22:32. (The course was about 6.2K.) She ran with Jocelyn Chau, the eventual silver medallist, and Lilly Tuck, another Grade 11 runner, who won bronze, for most of the race before pulling away in the end and winning by 15 seconds.

In 2016, she won the junior (Grade 10) cross-country race in Port Hope by 16 seconds and the midget (Grade 9) race in Duntroon by 28 seconds.

Outside of school, Ormond trains with the Newmarket Huskies, a club she’s representing at the Athletics Ontario Cross-Country Championships on Nov. 12. (AOs is the club equivalent, in certain divisions, for OFSAA in Ontario.) She’s raced for the Huskies since Grade 8 and trains with the club twice a week, in addition to running four other days of the week, with a rest day.

On top of running, Ormond – whose favourite runner is Melissa Bishop – plays basketball with the school team and is on the swim team. In addition to AOs, in Bracebridge, Ont., where Ormond spoke to us from, the 16-year-old plans on racing at the Canadian Cross-Country Championships in Kingston, Ont. at the end of November. She’ll be racing in an older category, where a spot on an international team, specifically the 2018 Pan American Cross-Country Championships, is on the line.

Check out the latest buyer's guide:

The best trainers in Canada under $150

We curated the best performance trainers under $150 to meet your 2024 running goals, while staying on budget