It was a successful weekend for the Ottawa Lions with a five athletes representing Canada at the historical Penn Relays on Saturday in Philadelphia while a larger group participated in the Big Red Invite in Ithaca, New York on Sunday.
Headlining the performances from the weekend was Melissa Bishop who led Canada to a fifth place finish in the “USA vs The World” women’s 4x800m event at the Penn Relays in Canadian record time of 8:14.85. Bishop, who posted the team’s fastest split of 2:02.2, ran lead off for Team Canada as they shaved nearly 14 seconds off the previous record.
On the men’s 4x400m team, Ottawa Lions runners comprised half the team with Devin Biocchi and Gordon Frenke running the final two legs. The Canadian quartet crossed the line in 3:07.99 to finish 8th. The time was the fastest by a Canadian team since the 2011 Panamerican Games. Rounding out the Lions contingent in Philadelphia was Michael Robertson who ran as part of the Canadian distance medley relay team which finished 7th in a time 9:29.15. Robertson completed is 400m leg in 46.0 seconds.
In Ithaca, two new all-time top 10 performances headlined the list of achievements. Sprint hurdler Ashlea Maddex set a new personal best of 13.40 seconds on her way to capturing victory in the 100m hurdles as she improved on her second place ranking in club history. The time also broke her own facility record set back in 2011. The other top ten performance came from discus thrower Katie Klatt who unleashed a sizeable personal best throw to move up to tenth in the all-time club rankings with a throw of 40.59m.
Other notable performances from Cornell came from hurdlers Sekou Kaba and Devyani Biswal. Kaba, last year’s national silver medalist, posted a swift time of 14.02 seconds in the 110m hurdles to finish second behind former NCAA champion Jarrett Eaton. Kaba’s time currently ranks him third in Canada. For Biswal, her time of 14.32 seconds removed more than two tenth’s of a second from her previous personal best and now ranks her ninth in Canada.
A small contingent of Lions athletes will be competing Wednesday night at the Liberty Twilight Qualifier on Wednesday night in Lynchburg, Virginia. Live results will be available at here.
