{"id":29673,"date":"2017-04-17T16:25:46","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T20:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/huntsville.dopperonline.ca\/?p=29673"},"modified":"2017-04-17T20:15:12","modified_gmt":"2017-04-18T00:15:12","slug":"ofsaa-rules-that-high-school-girls-can-run-distances-equal-to-boys","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doppleronline.ca\/huntsville\/ofsaa-rules-that-high-school-girls-can-run-distances-equal-to-boys\/","title":{"rendered":"High school girls are now allowed to run the same distances as boys"},"content":{"rendered":"

It turns out girls can run after all. Until last week, high school girls in Ontario who wanted to compete in cross-country running weren’t allowed to run as far as their male counterparts. [See Doppler’s earlier story on the rule here<\/a><\/span>.]\n

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Thanks to an eight-year effort spearheaded by Huntsville Hoyas cross-country coach Pierre Mikhail, and complemented by coaches in other regions more recently, OFSAA – the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations, which organizes and sanctions championships for most major sports in Ontario schools – voted to allow girls and boys to run equal distances.<\/p>\n

Prior to the vote, OFSAA rules specified that running distances for female students in cross-country events would be 2,000 metres less than for male students in all categories: 3,000 metres for Midget Girls versus 5,000 for the boys, 4,000 metres for Junior Girls versus 6,000 metres for the boys, and 5,000 metres for Senior Girls versus 7,000 metres for the boys.<\/p>\n

As a result of the vote – which Mikhail says was overwhelmingly in favour of the change – all runners in each category will now run the average of the two previous distances, 4,000 metres, 5,000 metres and 6,000 metres, regardless of gender.<\/p>\n

Mikhail posted the news to the Muskoka Algonquin Runners Facebook page on April 7: “If you believe in gender equality in sport, today is a good day. After a long fight and pressure applied OFSAA voted in favour of equalizing distances in XC for boys and girls. All midgets will run 4K, all juniors 5K and all seniors 6K.”<\/p>\n

He says the decision was long overdue.<\/p>\n

I feel like it\u2019s about time. In five years when we look back, it\u2019s going to be a non-issue. People will be wondering why it was ever any different. At the Olympics, women don\u2019t run less than the men. In track and field, even in high school, the girls don\u2019t run less. It\u2019s just a weird thing that happened (in cross-country) and then there was inertia. People didn\u2019t want to change. One of the delays was that no one could decide on what the distance was, but that\u2019s a less important issue. The important issue is that they can run the same distance and they should be allowed to.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Mikhail first began writing letters about eight years ago and for five of those years he didn’t even receive a reply. Undaunted, he kept trying. He asked friend and former American Olympian Lynn Jennings, who won bronze in the Women’s 10,000 metres at the 1992 Summer Olympics, to write to OFSAA, too.<\/p>\n

in 2015, Huntsville’s Kyra Watters helped create a video for the Hoyas showing that girls can run just as far as boys (see below). It accompanied a change.org petition that garnered almost 900 signatures – every time it was signed, an email was sent to OFSAA. That year, the annual Hoyas’ invitational race – Hoya Hills – did away with discrepancies in distances and also allowed the girls and boys to race together, a move that Mikhail says showed that some girls do run faster than some boys.<\/p>\n