HAMILTON, Ont. – For the 17th time in the last 21 years, the Guelph Gryphons are OUA champions in men's cross country. Saturday in Hamilton, the Gryphon men took the OUA banner, their first OUA title since 2017, with fourth-year standout Mitch Ubene leading the way by finishing 1st in a field of 85 runners. Ubene becomes the 16th individual in Gryphon history to be named the individual champion in men's cross country.
Mitch Ubene takes individual gold at 2019 Cross Country Championships
The Gryphon men placed three athletes in the top four to edge the host Marauders in the team standings.
On the women's side, the Gryphons took home silver in the team standings led by a 6th-place finish from Hannah Woodhouse. Full details from the 2019 OUA Cross Country Championships below.
Gryphon Men's Results:
1st – Mitch Ubene (31:00.6)
3rd – Mark Patton (31:12.6)
4th – Kalum Delaney (31:13.8)
12th – John Perrier (31:54.2)
20th – Nicolas Bannon (32:17.2)
28th – Josh Kellier (32:421.)
35th – Gavin Hughes (32.57.1)
2019 OUA Men's Cross Country Championship Team Standings
1 Guelph Gryphons 40 points
2 McMaster Marauders 48 points
3 Queen's Gaels 83* points
4 Windsor Lancers 83* points
5 Western Mustangs 118 points
6 Laurentian Voyaguers 155 points
7 Toronto Varsity Blues 162 points
8 Waterloo Warriors 232 points
9 Laurier Golden Hawks 263 points
10 Nipissing Lakers 298 points
11 Brock Badgers 304 points
Gryphon Women's Results:
6th – Hannah Woodhouse (28:29.2)
10th – Kiana Gibson (29:11.4)
12th – Cameron Ormond (29:15.3)
14th – Sadie-Jane Hickson (29:35.3)
15th – Annika Ariano (29:35.6)
16th – Olivia Roussel (29:38.1)
2019 OUA Women's Cross Country Team Standings
1 Queen's Gaels 37 points
2 Guelph Gryphons 57 points
3 Toronto Varsity Blues 76 points
4 Western Mustangs 108 points
5 McMaster Marauders 165 points
6 Waterloo Warriors 170 points
7 Windsor Lancers 179 points
8 Laurier Golden Hawks 200 points
9 Nipissing Lakers 269 points
10 York Lions 289 points
11 Ryerson Rams 306 points
12 Laurentian Voyaguers 327 points
MEN'S RECAP
Mitch Delange's courageous gambit to open Saturday's race threw the OUA Championship in disarray, but the Guelph Gryphons showed their experience and poise to ultimately come away with the title.
Setting a torrid early pace, the Queen's Gael Delange snatched the lead through the first half of the men's 10-kilometre event at Hamilton's Bayfront Park while sending Western's Isaiah Frielink and McMaster's Alex Drover on a breakaway chase.
Frielink managed to maintain his pace, and break a Guelph stranglehold on the podium by winning silver, but Delange fell to ninth and watched as the Gryphons pack made their move in the last 10 minutes.
Working his way from the second chase group, Mitch Ubene surged into the lead and took gold by a 10-second margin in 31:00.6, while the Gryphons initial pack leader Mark Patton won bronze and Kalum Delaney followed in fourth.
That masterful bit of tactical running was enough to earn Guelph the team title in a tight, two-team contest between the U SPORTS no. 3-ranked Gryphons and the defending champions and meet hosts, the McMaster Marauders.
Retaking the title they last won in 2017, the Gryphons 40-point performance edged the Marauders by eight, with the bronze-medal-winning Queen's Gaels trailing another 35 points behind.
The trio of Ubene, Patton and Delaney earned OUA First Team All-Star honours, with John Perrier cracking the Second Team by scoring 12th and Nick Bannon completing the scoring for Guelph in 20th.
Dave Scott-Thomas added to his overflowing trophy case in the wake of his team's victory, earning his 10th OUA Coach of the Year honour on the men's side and his 17th overall.
Despite a strong group performance that saw their final scorer cross the line 15th, McMaster was punished for its inability to crack the individual podium.
Second-year racer Andrew Davies provided the Marauders low post by scoring fifth, with Drover following less than two seconds behind in sixth after his bid to chase down Delange. Defending individual champion Max Turek crossed the line eighth, while Dylan Alick joined him on the OUA Second Team by finishing 14th and Sergio Raez Villanueva completed the Marauders scoring in 15th.
Battling for the final spot on the team podium, the Gaels and Windsor Lancers needed to dip into the displacers to settle it, as the teams finished level on 83 points through five scorers. It fell to Matt Pardo, who scored sixth for Queen's in 32nd place, to break the tie by beating Windsor's own sixth scorer, Jonathan Rioux, by five spots.
Pardo's effort eked out bronze for the Gaels, who were led by an OUA First Team-worthy performance from Rob Kanko (seventh) and Delange's ninth-placed run that earned him a spot on the Second Team. Nathan Dehghan (11th), Miles Brackenbury (26th) and Mitch Kirby (30th) rounded out the scoring for Queen's, which earned its spot as the nation's no. 5 seed entering competition Saturday.
His team finished fifth, but Western's Marcel Scheele came away from Bayfront Park with some hardware, as his 13th overall finish was the best among first-year racers and earned him the OUA Rookie of the Year nod.
2019 OUA Men's Cross Country Championship Major Awards
MVP: Mitch Ubene - Guelph
Rookie of the Year: Marcel Scheele - Western
Coach of the Year: Kyle Boorsma - Guelph
2019 OUA Men's Cross Country All-Stars
First Team
Mitch Ubene - Guelph
Isaiah Frielink - Western
Mark Patton - Guelph
Kalum Delaney - Guelph
Andrew Davies - McMaster
Alex Drover - McMaster
Rob Kanko - Queen's
Second Team
Max Turek - McMaster
Mitch Delange - Queen's
Josh Martin - Windsor
Nathan Dehghan - Queen's
John Perrier - Guelph
Marcel Scheele - Western
Dylan Alick - McMaster
WOMEN'S RECAP
The characters on the women's podium at the 2019 OUA Cross Country Championships were in no doubt within the opening minutes of the eight kilometre race. But watching where exactly the three of them would be placed by the event's end proved an absorbing, and ultimately dramatic exercise Saturday.
Charging away from the pack early and battling amongst themselves for much of their half-hour-long run at Hamilton's Bayfront Park, the trio of Toronto's Lucia Stafford and Queen's sisters Branna and Brogan MacDougall comprised the top three individually, while the Gaels helped their team to a third consecutive conference banner.
Racing in her first cross country event of the season, Stafford was able to stick with the MacDougalls early and make her decisive move in the final two kilometres to snatch the title by a six-second margin in a time of 27:20.2.
The elder of the Gaels sisters, Branna followed in 27:26.9 to claim silver, while the defending OUA champion and Rookie of the Year Brogan took bronze in 28:01.5.
While their disappointment in missing individual gold was palpable at race's end, the MacDougalls' efforts helped Queen's handily take their eponymous Queen's Cup trophy and OUA championship banner for a third consecutive season.
The Gaels scored a blistering 37 points to outpace their nearest competitors, the silver-medal-winning Guelph Gryphons, by a full 20 points.
Kara Blair (fourth), Marley Beckett (11th) and Tori Bouck (17th) rounded out the scoring for the Gaels, with Blair joining the MacDougalls among the OUA First Team All-Stars and Beckett cracking the Second Team. With his team earning the title for a third consecutive season, Queen's coach Steve Boyd was named as the OUA Coach of the Year for the third time.
Guelph's silver medal was the just reward for an exceptional pack run, which saw the Gryphons five scorers all cross the finish line between sixth and 15th. Veteran Hannah Woodhouse led the way in the sixth spot to gain First Team status, while Kiana Gibson (10th), Cameron Ormond (12th) and Sadie-Jane Hickson (14th) were all named to the Second Team.
For the Varsity Blues, Stafford's heroics propelled them back onto the conference podium after a fifth-placed finish a season ago. Toronto out-performed its pre-event ranking as the nation's no. 8 seed and the fourth-ranked OUA team, easily topping fourth-placed Western by 32 points.
Katherine Lampard crucially provided a second top-10 score for the Blues by crossing the line eighth, and earned a Second Team spot as a result, while Jazz Shukla (18th), Christiana Agustin (25th) and Tanis Bolton (26th) completed Toronto's scoring.
The top scoring first-year runner on the morning was Waterloo's Isabella Thornton-Bott, who finished fifth in a time of 28:26.1 and was named as the OUA Rookie of the Year as a result.
2019 OUA Women's Cross Country Major Awards
MVP: Lucia Stafford - Toronto
Coach of the Year: Steve Boyd - Queen's
Rookie of the Year: Isabella Thornton-Bott - Waterloo
2019 OUA Women's Cross Country All-Stars
First Team
Lucia Stafford - Toronto
Branna MacDougall - Queen's
Brogan MacDougall - Queen's
Kara Blair - Queen's
Isabella Thornton-Bott - Waterloo
Hannah Woodhouse - Guelph
Kate Current - Western
Second Team
Katherine Lampard - Toronto
Lizzy Laurie - Laurier
Kiana Gibson - Guelph
Marley Beckett - Queen's
Cameron Ormond - Guelph
Sydney Pattison - Laurier
Sadie-Jane Hickson - Guelph
