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Historic Year for ESA Track and Field

May 28, 2014 was a historic day for ESA track and field at the Metro Regional Championships at Birchmount Stadium in Scarborough. As expected, Kristen Metcalfe and Santi Bessai cemented their spots as the two best runners our school has ever seen by winning the 400m dash and 2000m steeplechase respectively. That alone was an amazing moment for Etobicoke School of the Arts – a school that does not usually produce athletes of such calibre.
There were a few near misses for OFSAA, like Chiara Ferrero-Wong who finished 7th in the 80m hurdles and the enormous grade 10 student, Hale Murphy, who came 6th in the discus and 7th in the shot put. The moment of the day, however, belonged to the senior girls 4x100m relay team of Katrina Hubler, the aforementioned Kristen Metcalfe, Hailey Radigan, and Emma Cullen Shaw, who ran a fantastic time of 51.65 to scrape into the OFSAA championships in 4th place, qualifying by 0.02 seconds.
May 29, day 2 of the city finals, saw Kristen win the 400m hurdles, as expected, and Santi Bessai ran his way into OFSAA with an excellent 3rd place in the 3000m with a run of 8:48.82. All of our athletes – even those who have unfortunately not made it to OFSAA – have greatly impressed. I cannot officially say that ESA has never had so many OFSAA qualifiers, or had such a strong team, but it was a massively impressive season and one that has not gone unnoticed by coaches and officials from across the city.
The OFSAA championships in Mississauga marked the end of the season June 5, 6 and 7. The objectives of our qualifiers were admittedly very different. Our girls relay team was honoured at the opportunity to brush shoulders with the greats, and with grade 9 student Phoebe Wolfe admirably filling in for the injured Hailey Radigan, the girls ran another fantastic race and finished a respectable 19th place.
Santi Bessai knew he had an outside shot at a top 3 in the 2000m steeplechase, and he ran like a man possessed in the final. He constantly attacked and pushed himself to the absolute limit and with a fantastic time of 6:02.90 he placed 4th – unfortunately missing the podium but breaking his personal best by almost 6 seconds. This fantastic runner also placed 16th in the 3000m, a result he was unhappy with but he has served our school so fantastically well over his four years here and will be greatly missed.
Kristen Metcalfe was constantly surrounded by coaches and scouts who were scrutinizing her every move and giving her as many cliches and pep talks that they could think of. Under this pressure, she ran a phenomenal 55.17 in the 400m and placed second, earning ESA a remarkably rare spot on the OFSAA podium on Friday June 6. She tried to follow it up with another podium finish the next day but settled for a wonderful 6th place in the 400m hurdles. Kristen’s accomplishments will surely not be matched for a very long time by another ESA athlete. She has very quietly and humbly dominated her region for three years now, and this year she has made a meteoric rise into becoming one of the elite of Ontario and even Canada while still maintaining her gentle demeanour. Some of her coaches have told me she has a reasonable shot at becoming an Olympic athlete in a few years.  Like Santi, she is graduating this year and our track and field program owes her a huge debt for her dedication and monstrous success over these four years and the OFSAA medal marked a fitting end to the journey.