TRACK AND FIELD ROUNDUP: McGill Team Challenge

Lions win McGill Team Challenge; women finish sixth

The York University Lions men's track and field team won the McGill Team Challenge by two points over the Guelph Gryphons in Montreal this past weekend (Jan. 23-24), while the women finished in sixth place.
 
The Lions men's team ended the meet with 104 points, just eclipsing the 102 Guelph put up. The women finished with 53 points, one behind fifth-place Sherbrooke. The Toronto Varsity Blues won with 103.5 points.
 
The men won six medals at the meet and had 21 top-10 finishes.
 
Leading the way was Bismark Boateng (Toronto), who captured individual gold and silver medals and added a third in the relay. The third-year sprinter finished first in the 60m in a season-best time of 6.83 seconds, which also surpassed the CIS qualifying standard. He continued his impressive weekend in the 300m with a silver medal in a personal-best time of 34.15 seconds, also a CIS qualifying time. He wrapped up his weekend by running the opening leg of the 4x200m relay team that won the gold medal in a time of 1:27.53, which qualified the quartet for the CIS championships.
 
Joining Boateng on the relay team was Ayo Agusto (Toronto), Lucas Watson (Truro, N.S.) and Jameel Brown (Brampton, Ont.).
 
Agusto nearly won his own individual medal with a fourth-place result in the 300m in a personal-best time of 34.32 seconds. He did add to his collection the 4x400m relay, however, by running the first leg en route to a bronze medal in a time of 3:19.10. Brown, Watson and Jalen Pidlubny (Scarborough, Ont.) rounded out the team.
 
David McKay (Victoria) and Eric Brathwaite (Brampton, Ont.) added to the medal haul with silver medals in the pole vault and weight throw, respectively. McKay cleared a season-best height of 4.93 metres, while Brathwaite's best distance was 18.02 metres.
 
The Lions women's team won four medals and recorded 10 top-10 finishes.
 
Brittany Crew (East York, Ont.) won a pair of medals in the throwing events, taking gold in the shot put with a distance of 14.11 metres and bronze in the weight throw with a season-best distance of 16.61 metres. She was joined on the podium in the shot put by teammate Jacinta Cowan (Bala, Ont.), who posted a 13.18-metre throw for the bronze medal.
 
Rounding out the medals was Holly Pitters (Mississauga, Ont.), who claimed silver in the long jump with a personal-best distance of 5.81 metres.
 
The Lions will be in action at home in their next meet of the season when they host the York Open at the Toronto Track and Field Centre on Saturday (Jan. 31).

Source: York Lions

Toronto women 1st, men 5th at McGill Team Challenge

The No. 1 nationally ranked University of Toronto Varsity Blues women's track and field team won the McGill Team Challenge, January 23-24, in Montreal.

The Blues finished with 103.5 points, ahead of the Guelph Gryphons (81) and Dalhousie Tigers (80). U of T's men placed fourth overall with 69 points, behind York (104), Guelph (102) and Laval (95).

Leading Toronto's women once again was veteran runner Sasha Gollish. Gollish placed first in both the 600m (1:31.42) and 3000m (9:26.69), while Rachel Jewett was second in the 600m (1:31.85).

Maddy Kelly placed second in the 1000m in a time of 2:49.96, while Maggie Hanlon finished third in the 300m in 39.22.

Hanlon, Kelly, Jewett and Fiona Callender teamed up to win the 4x400 relay with a time of 3:46.58. Hanlon, Callender, Maddy Warren and Jessica Caterini also placed second in the 4x200 relay in 1:41.68.

Sacha Smart led Toronto's men with a first-place finish in the 600m (1:19.13) and a second place finish in the 1000m, bettering his own U of T record time with a 2:21.35.

Greg MacNeil placed first in the 300m in a U of T record time of 33.76 seconds and then broke another school record with with Rayshaun Franklin, Kyle Thompson and Isiah Weathers, placing second in the 4x200 relay (1:27.74).

Source: Toronto Varsity Blues

Plethora of records tumble at McGill Team Challenge

MONTREAL -- Dylan Golow, a neuroscience senior from Barrie, Ont., broke his own McGill record in the men's pentathlon at the 20th annual McGill Team Challenge track and field meet at Richard Tomlinson Fieldhouse, Saturday. The two-day competition, billed as the largest indoor track meet in Canada, attracted 749 athletes and 21 universities, 19 of them CIS institutions. Among the highlights were two Quebec provincial records, six new meet standards, two fieldhouse marks and one McGill record.

The York Lions and Toronto Varsity Blues claimed the respective men's and women's titles. Guelph led all schools with a combined 16 medals between the genders, five of them golden, followed by Toronto (14), York (13), Laval (13) and Dalhousie (12). York claimed the most gold medals with seven (see medal chart below).

McGill captured six medals, including one gold, three silvers and a pair of bronzes. Their lone gold was claimed by the Redmen 4x200m relay squad, clocked in 3:17.99, just shy of the team record (3:17.83). The winning foursome included freshman Ryan McClelland of Toronto, who ran leadoff, followed by juniors Steven Murray of Burlington, Ont., Vincent Parent-Pichette of St. Paul de Joliette, Que., and Javier Montalvo of Closter, N.J..

Golow scored 3,597 points to finish second overall. His previous personal best was 3,571 set in Quebec City last February. Riley van Ryswyk of Surrey, B.C., placed second in the men's pole vault, clearing a height of 4.83 metres to meet the qualifying standard for the CIS championships, March 12-14, at Windsor, Ont. The 5-foot-11, 150-pound electrical engineering senior just missed the McGill record of 4.85 set in 2011 by Maxime Beaumont-Courteau.

McGill's Hao Xu, a mechanical engineering junior from Houston, Texas, also shared a silver-medal finish in the men's high jump, which featured a rare four-way tie with each athlete clearing 1.93m in the same number of jumps. Caila Kucheravy, an accounting junior from Winnipeg, was third in the women's long jump with a leap of 5.63m, shy of the McGill record of 5.72 -- held since 1992 by Kristen Fry -- and the CIS qualifying standard of 5.88. Also finishing on the podium for the Martlets was Helena Reinfels, a third-year geography major from Puslinch, Ont., who scored 3,146 points for a third-place finish in the women's pentathlon. The school record is 3,515 set by Alana Battiston in 2013.

Laval's Charles Philibert-Thiboutot, a 24-year-old middle-distance runner from Quebec City, accounted for a whopping six records. He finished atop the podium in the men's 1,000m, establishing a Quebec senior record, along with fieldhouse and meet marks in a sizzling two minutes, 21.02 seconds. He erased the previous provincial mark of 2:22.09, set by Tommy Lecours in Winnipeg on March 9, 2012. Philibert-Thiboutot also smashed the Quebec, fieldhouse and meet records in the 1500m, crossing the line in 3:43.21. It bettered his own Quebec record of 3:45.26 set on Jan. 25, 2014.

Among other marks to tumble was the women's 4x200 relay, won by the Western Mustangs in 1:40.48, with a fousome composed of Joy Spear Chief-Morris of Lethbridge, Alta., in the leadoff leg, followed by Jen Barbon of London, Ont., Sarah Clancy of Toronto and Rachael Muma of St. Thomas, Ont. They surpassed the previous mark of 1:40.74 held by another Western quartet since 2013.

The final meet record to fall was in the men's pentathalon, where Guelph's Taylor Corney racked up 3,848 points, surpassing the previous mark of 3,745 set by Mark Chenery in 2011.

A special men's 5000m race was held for elite runners and was won by Sami Jibril, a 25-year-old native of Rome who emigrated to Canada when he was three and was raised in Brampton, Ont. This distance had never before been run at Tomlinson Fieldhouse so his winning time of 14:22.24 established a new fieldhouse record.

In the men's team scoring, York amassed 104 points to edge Guelph by a slim margin of two and win the meet for the fourth time in two decades.Laval was third with 95, followed by Toronto (69), Dalhousie (54.75), McGill (41.75), Sherbrooke (35.5), Western (33), Ottawa (28.75), McMaster (27), UNB (23.25), Queen's (11), St.FX (8), Carleton (7); Universite d'Orleans (France) (5), Saint Mary's (2), Moncton (2) and Concordia (1).

On the women's side, Toronto cruised to an easy victory with 103.5 points. Guelph placed second, collecting 81, for a one point edge on Dalhousie (80). Western was fourth with 61, followed by Sherbrooke (53), York (53), Laval (49.5), Ottawa (37), McGill (26.5), UQAO (20), UNB (19), St.FX (18), Montreal (13), Moncton (12.5), McMaster (11), Saint Mary's (3), Queen's (3), Concordia (2) and Laurentian (2).

Link to complete results

(SEE LIST OF ALL MEDAL WINNERS POSTED BELOW)

*NOTE: Three more silvers awarded (and one less bronze) because of a four-way tie in the men's long jump