Posts in category: National

It was a small group that travelled to Montreal last weekend for the Canadian Indoor Track and Field Championships, but that didn’t stop them from bringing a large collection of medals back to Ottawa with them. In total, Lions athletes captured nine medals over the three day event with nearly half going to the Moreland family. 

Sisters Elizabeth and Kathryn Moreland combined for four medals in Montreal – all of them gold. They each topped their respective fields in the pentathlon on Saturday, a one day test over five events. Kathryn was victorious in the U20 category with a score of 3175 points while Elizabeth totalled 2703 to top the open category. Teammate Coralie Ostertag took home silver behind Elizabeth.

To round out a busy Saturday, all three athletes teamed up with Natalie Feberova, 5th in the U20 pentathlon, to capture top spot in the open women’s 4×200 metre event. 

Elizabeth rounded out her medal haul on the final day of competition with a gold in the high jump. She cleared a height of 1.53 metres for gold, beating out Dynamique de Laval’s Samira Yao by three centimetres.

Two other Lions athletes found their way onto the podium Saturday evening with both Leewinchell Jean and Brooklyn McCormick garnering silver medals in their respective events. 

Competing in the open 60 metre hurdles, Jean lost a tight battle for gold with Durham Legion’s Ashton Colaire. His time of 8.25 seconds, the second fastest time of his season, was just five hundredth’s back of the winner. 

McCormick culminated a long indoor season with national silver at 800 metres. The graduate student at the University of Toronto finished in 2:20.59, beaten to the line by 2020 Olympian Reagan Yee in a tactical affair.

The final day of the Championship saw the Lions add the final two medals to their collection. Nicolas Belan, who has had a very strong indoor season, closed things out with a silver in U20 1500 metres. In a quintessential championship 1500, the 18-year-old lost in a quick to the line with London Western’s Liam Smith, 4:01.30 to 4:01.45. 

Balqis Chouikhi took home the final medal of the Championship as she cleared a height of 2.85 metres in the pole vault to take silver in the U18 event. Chouikhi’s medal is the first national medal for a Lions vaulter since Caroline Poirier also won silver at the 2018 Canadian U20 Championships. 

Full results from the Championship are available on our website.

Updated Club rankings can be found at https://milesrowat.shinyapps.io/ottl_rankings/

Sunday was about redemption for Connor Fraser. Just two days removed from his Canadian Track and Field Championship debut, the 19-year-old was looking to make up for a lacklustre performance in the discus and bring home that eluded him in the discus. 

Coming off a pair of victories in both the discus and shot put at the Ontario U20 Championships, Fraser was expected to challenge for the double in Langley. After nerves got the best of him, the Carleton University student could only sit and watch the discus final Friday night as he finished ninth overall. 

The disappointment from Friday’s result ignited a fire in Fraser for Sunday’s shot put competition. More relaxed, he opened the competition with a throw of 16.17 metres to take the early lead. After getting bumped to second in round two, Connor unleashed a personal best throw of 17.10 metres in round four to seal his top spot in the competition. 

For good measure, Fraser added another personal best in the final round with a throw of 17.11 metres. The throw makes him only one of three Lions U20 athletes to ever throw over 17 metres with the 6 kilogram ball, and the first not named Nedow.

Staying in the field, Maria Okwechime produced the top performance in the open women’s long jump with a leap of 6.13 metres. The distance equalled Maria’s personal best from earlier in the season at the Bob Vigars Classic. Despite producing the top jump of the competition, Maria did not take home the gold medal as she is not a Canadian citizen or permanent resident. 

On the track, the senior women repeated as Canadian champions in the 4×400 metre relay. This year, the team of Doyin Ogunremi, Sia Mahajan, Sydney Smith and Alexandra Telford topped the field with their 3 minutes and 50.18 second clocking. 

Upgrading their position from 2022, the men’s 4×400 metre team took home the silver medal. Bertwin Ben-Smith, Stephen Evans, Lucas Zanetti, and David Moulongou got the stick around the track four times in 3 minutes and 15.81 seconds – the fastest time for the year by any Lions team.

Rounding out the medal haul was the quartet of Seiyf Gebara, Bertwin Ben-Smith, David Adeleye, and Michael Pinnock, who got the baton around the track in a 41.82 seconds to take the bronze medal  in the senior men’s 4×100 metres. 

A quartet of 400 metre hurdlers nearly added a few more medals to the tally. Alexandra Telford finished fourth for the second year in a row in the senior women’s race with a personal best of 58.51 seconds. In the U20 races, it was a pair of U18 runners that nearly stole the show. Both Quinn Coughlin and Zachary Jeggo just missed the podium in fourth place. Rounding out the quartet, David Moulongou placed fifth in the senior men’s event with a time of 53.97 seconds.

Full results from the Championship are available on our website.

Updated Lion rankings are available at https://milesrowat.shinyapps.io/ottl_rankings/

Focus. It’s one word to describe the transformation that’s been on display in Stephen Evans’ running this season. A year removed from a disappointing exit in the 800 metre preliminaries at the Canadian Championships, Evans attacked the 2023 season with a focus not seen in the 11 years he has run with the Lions.

Saturday evening Evans was rewarded for his focus as he became the first male in Club history ever to win a medal over 800 metres at the Canadian Track and Field Championships. 

In one of the most exciting finals of the Championship, Evans produced a kick for the ages to finish third across the line. Sitting back in sixth place as the runners entered the final homestretch, the former USports Champion began running down the field one by one culminating in an eye popping clocking of 1 minute and 47.02 seconds. 

Stephen’s time from Saturday’s final also bettered his two week old Club 800 metre record. 

Also finding their way to the podium Saturday evening was 21-year-old David Adeleye who ran his way to a third place finish in the men’s 110 metre hurdles. It was no clear path for Adeleye, who not only had to battle the 10 barriers in his own lane, but also narrowly avoided an errant hurdle from the lane next to him that had been hit by Olympic decathlon champion Damian Warner. 

Unscathed, Adeleye made it across the line in 13.98 seconds. It was the third fastest performance of the University of Toronto student’s career. 

Staying in the hurdles, Keira Christie-Galloway finished in the top five of the women’s 100 metre hurdles. Christie-Galloway was clocked in a windy 13.30 seconds. 

Lizzy Vroom followed her silver medal performance in the steeplechase with an eighth place finish in Saturday’s U20 1500 metre final. Vroom was eighth across the finish line, stopping the clock at 4 minutes and 33.79 seconds – nearly two seconds under her previous best. 

Finishing the evening off on the track, Sydney Smith finished seventh at 800 metres in her first national final. The 26-year-old Smith finished the two laps event in a time of 2 minutes and 6.13 seconds.