This past weekend was busy with conference championships for universities both north and south of the border with Lions athletes capturing a total of 15 medals.
At the Big 12 indoor championships, Iowa State junior Erinn Stenman-Fahey ran her way to a silver medal in the 1000m by shattering her previous best with a 2:46.18 clocking. The time improved upon her previous record, set last month, by more than three seconds. The Bell High School graduate’s performance also moved her to number three in club history behind the likes of Melissa Bishop and Anna Gunasekera. Stenman-Fahey was also the lead runner on the Iowa State gold medal winning distance medley relay.
At the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) championship in Windsor, Gee Gee freshman Keira Christie-Galloway kicked things off with a bang, speeding her way to a silver medal in the 60m hurdles. Christie-Galloway’s time of 8.31 eclipsed the previous Gee Gee record of 8.35 seconds set by Devyani Biswal en route to winning OUA gold in 2016. Keira is also now ranked second in club history behind Olympian Leslie Tashlin who holds the club record at 8.11 seconds from 1996.
A pair of Lions captured their first individual OUA medals in the 600m. Stephen Evans followed up his personal best performance from the week prior to capture silver in the men’s event by Guelph’s Thomas Land. On the women’s side, Madison Clarke turned in the second best performance of her life to pick up bronze in a time of 1:31.62. Clarke, was also instrumental in the Gee Gee women picking up their third OUA bronze since 2015 in the 4x800m relay.
Looking to secure his spot in the upcoming USport Championships, multi eventer Tolu Makinde put together the best two days of his life to secure silver in the seven event heptathlon. Makinde’s score of 4533 points was a more than 300 point improvement over his previous best this year.
While Ty Coulter’s best effort in the weight throw fell just short of her week’s old school record, the 15.74m heave was still good enough to capture OUA silver. The second year criminology student has had the best season of their young career, with nearly every performance exceeding their best first year effort. As well, Coulter has thrice broken the Gee Gee record in the event.
Further east, at the Quebec University Championships in Sherbrooke, the Carleton Ravens pulled in seven medals including picking up bronze in all three of the men’s relays.
The one constant across all three relays was the brothers Saville making the younger Thomas one of three Ravens to ever be a triple medalist at the RSEQ championships, including former Raven Telvin Tavernier and Thomas’ old brother Sebastian. In fact, Sebastian also picked up a silver in the 600m event to capture a stunning four medals on the weekend.
Sprinter Emmanuel Nwokobia, a member of the 4x200m bronze winning team, also picked up a bronze in the 60m. It was Nwokobia’s third straight bronze over the distance. The final medal for the men came from Alex Maxwell, who claimed bronze in a time of 8:36.98.
The only medal from the came by way of Dani Ferguson-Jamer’s school record performance in the weight throw. The fourth year architecture student heaved the 20lb weight out to 14.61m for silver.
