Dave Paul He’s just 15, so Sarnia’s Andrew Davies was an underdog heading into last weekend’s OFSAA Cross Country Championships in Port Hope, Ont. Competing as a senior, he was one of the youngest athletes in the field.
Dave Paul
He’s just 15, so Sarnia’s Andrew Davies was an underdog heading into last weekend’s OFSAA Cross Country Championships in Port Hope, Ont.
Competing as a senior, he was one of the youngest athletes in the field. But Davies has shown over and over he isn’t intimidated by larger, older competition.
In fact, the Grade 11 student at Northern Collegiate won this year’s Lambton-Kent cross country senior boys championship, easily topping a field of 60 runners, finishing more than 30 seconds ahead of the second-place finisher.
He followed that up with a fifth-place finish at the SWOSSAA championships.
And just a day before the Lambton-Kent meet, Davies won the boys open singles tennis title (for tournament-sanctioned players) at the SWOSSAA championships, clobbering his opponent from Windsor Assumption, 8-1 in the final. That qualified him for the all-Ontario high school championships in Toronto in June.
The multi-talented Davies is a giant killer in tennis.
In 2014, he won the Little Caesar’s Jr. Tennis Tour and captured the 18-and-under singles title. He was 13 that summer.
Davies has been playing tennis from the age of nine.
“I started taking lessons at the Sarnia Riding Club,” he said. “After a couple of years there I went to Port Huron. They have a big junior program there … that is more developed, with more kids.”
Davies plays other racquet sports, including squash and badminton, and runs track. In fact, he’s competed in the 3,000 metres event at the all-Ontario championships the past couple of years.
“But I wouldn’t say I do quite as well at track and I prefer cross country.”
Davies said he prefers individual to team sports, although he’s quick to point out cross country is technically a team sport.
“I like that you can control how well you do by how hard you work,” he said.
Davies said he doesn’t know if he’s better at tennis or cross country. And he’s not sure what will happen about scholarships and university sports.
“I’m actually just starting to look into all of that now,” he said.
Either way, with a grade average of 95 last year, Davies said sports won’t be his top priority.
“I’ll probably be pretty focused on academics.”
