It was a busy weekend for Lions athletes competing both near and far on the weekend. At the NCAA Division III Championships in Delaware, Ohio horizontal jumper Divya Biswal had a weekend to remember, picking up her first national championship in the triple jump after finishing fourth in the long jump. Divya has had a career year so far in 2014, and added to it considerably at the championships where she got things started on Thursday with her fourth place finish in the long jump with a lifetime best 5.71m. Biswal likely gave her St. Lawrence Saints coaches a few heart palpitations after opening the championship with back to back fouls before produce the personal best jump. It would be her only legal effort of the day, proving one is sometimes enough.
Divya entered Saturday’s triple jump competition looking for that elusive gold medal following a silver and two bronze indoors and outdoors at the NCAA level. Leading for most of the competition with an opening round leap of 12.25m, the Sir Robert Borden grad was passed by 1cm in the fifth round by Bria Halama of Wisconsin-La Crosse. However, with her sixth and final jump Divya cued the dramatic finish, bounding her way out to a lifetime best 12.47m and her first NCAA Championship. In addition to her national title, the leap also moves her to number two in club history.
Also competing south of the border, hammer thrower Sultana Frizell followed up her national record performance from Thursday night with another victory at the Tucson Elite competition in Arizona. Frizell’s throw of 74.35 was nearly 60cm ahead of her nearest competitor.
In Windsor, Olympian Melissa Bishop was looking to hit the Commonwealth Games “A” standard of two minutes flat at the Windsor Open. Despite a valiant second lap effort, running alone, Bishop fell just off the mark as she crossed the line in 2:00.87. You can watch Melissa’s race in it’s entirety at the end of this article.
Rounding Saturday’s performances was Michael Robertson, running anchor on Canada’s 4x400m relay at the inaugural IAAF World Relays Champs. Mike kept Canada in the thick of things on the final lap, crossing the line in 3:04.85.
Finally, with Race Weekend taking over the City of Ottawa many Lions athletes put forth some impressive performances. Tommy Des Brisay certainly received the most amount of press for his 2 hours 39.21 minutes debut performance in the marathon, being recognized even on the CBC national news. However, another significant performance came from grade nine student Shona McColloch who finished an impressive 17th in the women’s 10km race with a personal best effort of 37 minutes 49 seconds.
Melissa Bishop’s 2:00.87 800m
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUK-sWNGDbA]
