It was close but Lo-Ellen Park Knights junior hurdler Serena San Cartier ensured that Sudbury would not be shutout of the medal hunt for a second consecutive year as the 2008 OFSAA Track & Field championships closed on Saturday in Hamilton.

In fact, the Jr Girls 80m hurdles produced two of Sudbury's top results for the three-day event. San Cartier garnered bronze, registering a time of 12.06 seconds, just 2/100th of a second away from a Silver medal finish after qualifying for the final in 6th (12.39).

Grace Thomson of Lockerby, who has been battling a leg injury much of the past 6-8 weeks, qualified 4th in a time of 12.19 but could not sustain it through to the final, finishing 7th in 13.58. San Cartier, the younger sibling of 2007 Lo-Ellen graduate and current member of the Indiana State Sycamores Natasia San Cartier, followed up her performance in the 80m hurdles by finishing 6th in the 300m hurdles (46.96).

Despite the single-medal output, there were a number of commendable efforts for SDSSA-based athletes as the local contingent was brought head to head with the best in the Province. Some were turned in by some very expected sources:

Likely the biggest surprise performance for a local athlete came in the Junior Girls pole vault as Lockerby's Stephanie Hancock, who finished 3rd at the city meet (2.07 metres) and 2nd at NOSSA (2.40 metres) continued her improving trend, clearing the bar at 2.70 metres in Hamilton, good enough for a 7th place finish

And although she is not a SDSSA athlete per se, Espanola Secondary school phenom Caroline Ehrhardt, also a member of Track North, clearly deserves mention for her accomplishments down south. At a meet where the margin of victory is often measured in one-hundreds of seconds or one-hundredth of a meter, Ehrhardt absolutely dominated the field in winning both the junior girls triple jump and long jump events.

Consider the following: all six of Ehrhardt's leaps in the triple jump (which ranged from 11.63 to 12.04 metres) were better than the top jump of any of the remaining 23 competitors - Taylor Neely of Uxbridge finished second with a jump of 11.39 metres.

Nearly as impressive in the long jump as Ehrhardt winning jump covered a distance of 5.58 metres, some 0.28 metres better than Neely (at 5.30) - if you take the same 0.28 gap that Ehrhardt won by, you cover the remaining top eight in the field behind the Silver medallist. Needless to say, her performance caught the attention of several NCAA schools who routinely attend the OFSAA championship, not to mention officials with Athletics Canada as well.

Following is a complete listing of the results for all local athletes who competed: