On her 14th birthday, Ontario high school running phenom Sawyer Nicholson of Stouffville, Ont., gave herself plenty of reason to celebrate.
On Saturday at the 2025 OFSAA Cross Country Championships in Brampton, Nicholson captured her first provincial high school title in the novice girls’ 4K, winning wire-to-wire in 15:22.37.
Competing for Bill Crothers Secondary School in Unionville, Nicholson went undefeated throughout her 2025 cross-country season, winning all five of her races comfortably. Her margin of victory in the 4km race at Heart Lake Conservation Area was an impressive 13 seconds.
In a social media post, Nicholson said that winning OFSAA was her biggest goal of the year, and she admitted feeling nervous heading into the race due to the pressure and expectations that came with her previous achievements.
Just two weeks earlier, Nicholson finished as runner-up at the Toronto Waterfront Marathon 5K, which doubled as the Ontario provincial 5K championships, setting a new personal best of 16:47. She continues to train under the guidance of Durham Dragons coach Zack Jones and former Canadian national team member and marathoner Sasha Gollish.
In 2023, Nicholson made global headlines when she broke the world age-group 5K record for runners under 12, clocking 17:28. She held the record for several months before it was lowered by Australian runner Tilly Williams, who ran six seconds faster.
The newly turned 14-year-old isn’t wrapping up her cross-country season just yet. Nicholson told Canadian Running that she plans to line up at the 2025 Canadian Cross Country Championships in London, Ont., at the end of November.
Brody Clark and Eleanor Voykin win senior OFSAA titles
To put a crown on her high school cross-country career, Toronto’s Eleanor Voykin won the senior girls’ 6K race to secure her third OFSAA XC title in the last four years. The Grade 12 Birchmount High School runner led the race from start to finish, beating second-place by a large margin of 59 seconds.
With the win, Voykin joins only Jessica Parry (London Central: 05′, 06′ and 08′) and Cameron Ormond (Aurora H.S.: 15′, 16′, 17′ and 18′) as the only two other runners to win three individual high school XC titles since 2000. The only year Vokyin did not win, she still finished runner-up.
In the men’s race, Brody Clark of Milton District H.S. continued his storybook season, winning the senior boys’ 6K with a time of 18:25. Even more impressive? He ran it old-school, not wearing a GPS watch.
Clark has been on a tear since trading in his football cleats for spikes after his freshman year. Just this past June, he swept the men’s 1,500m and 3,000m titles at the Ontario High School Track and Field Championships (OFSAA). He also owns the Canadian U18 and OFSAA record in the 3,000m (8:14.03), and his 1,500m best of 3:45.63 is just three seconds shy of Kevin Sullivan’s historic Canadian interscholastic record of 3:42:33, set in 1993.
Clark will take his talents to the NCAA circuit in 2026 to compete for Wake Forest University’s track and field and cross country program in Winston-Salem, N.C.
For full results from the 2025 OFSAA XC Championships, see here.
