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Before the CIS Championships kick off today in Edmonton, Alberta, there was some hardware to be handed out and one piece is coming back to Ottawa. Gee-Gee middle distance standout Emma Galbraith has been named the top rookie in the nation for her performances at 600m, 1000m, and 1500m this season. Emma beat out fellow 600m runner, Jenna Westaway of the University of Calgary, long jumper Sarah Taplin of Dalhousie University, and triple jumper Audrey Bonneau of l’Université de Sherbrooke to claim the award.
The Franco-Ouest graduate’s season so far has been highlighted by record breaking performances, including setting a new Canadian Junior Record in the 1000m at the New Balance Collegiate Invite in New York City last month. In addition to her national standard, she has also rewrote the University of Ottawa record books, establishing new records at 1000m, 1500m and in the mile for the Gee-Gees.
Emma is the first Gee-Gee to ever win a national rookie of the year award in track and field. Hurdler Ashlea Maddex was previously nominated for the same award in 2011. Galbraith is also only the second University of Ottawa student to recognized by the CIS following long jumper Christopher Greenaway’s Field Event MVP award in 2010.
Emma will look to continue her success as she races in the 1000m final tomorrow evening at 7pm eastern. She will follow that up with the 1500m and 4x400m finals on Sunday. You can follow the athletic endeavours of both Emma and her uOttawa teammates online this weekend with live streaming of the meet available at http://CIS-SIC.tv

The 2013 CIS Championships kick off this afternoon in Edmonton where the University of Ottawa Gee Gees will represented by six men and five women. At last year’s championships, the men finished fifth with 63 pts, while the women placed 13th with 20pts.
Leading the men this year will be veteran and team captain Michael Robertson. For Robertson, this will be his final CIS competition and he will undoubtedly be looking to add to his collection of five medals, including golds from both the 4x200m and 4x400m relays last year. He is slated to compete in the both relays again as well as the 300m, where he took home silver last year.
Robertson will be joined by the three gentlemen who helped him bring home gold last year, Oluwasegun Makinde, Devin Biocchi and Toluwalope Makinde. Both Oluwasegun and Devin will join Michael in the 300m, where the trio enter the meet all within the top four ranks. Oluwasegun will also be contesting the 60m hurdles and the flat 60m.
Rounding out the men’s team will be Gabriel Tesfaye and Hubert Chevrette-Belisle. Tesfaye will be run the 60m hurdles and is also a member of the relay pools. Chevrette-Belisle will join his two teammates in the hurdles Friday night, but he will compete in the gruelling five event pentathlon Thursday afternoon.
The women will be led by the young faces of rookie Emma Galbraith and sophomore Devyani Biswal, the only two Gee-Gees to enter the competition ranked in a medal position.
Galbraith will contest both the 1000m and 1500m after dropping the 600m following the OUA Championships. Emma enters the meet on the strength of her best ever 1500m last week in Ottawa as she set a uOttawa record of 4:20.23. The 1000m will take place Friday night with the 1500m going Saturday afternoon.
Meanwhile, Biswal has continued to improve week in and week out this season, culminating in her a personal best run of 8.57 seconds to finish third at the OUA Championships two weeks ago. Incidentally, that mark also has her ranked third in the CIS and she will need to be in top form to hold on to that spot in Friday’s finals.
Rounding out the women’s team will be Sarah de Carufel, who will run the 60m this evening. The soccer player turned sprinter, enters the competition ranked seventh. De Carufel and Biswal will also team up with Charlotte Gardner and Gift Okankwu in the 4x200m heats this evening. Galbraith with replace Biswal in the 4x400m relay finals on Saturday.
You can catch all the CIS action live from Edmonton on CIS-SIC.tv

The present and the future of female middle distance running took to the line on Saturday in the final Super Saturday Series meet of the season with Olympian Melissa Bishop in the 800m and University of Ottawa freshman Emma Galbraith in the 1500m.
Bishop, who’s indoor season has already included a club record 1:27.95 at 600m, was looking to get a jump start on her outdoor season with a fast performance in the 800m. The pride of Eganville didn’t disappoint, passing through 400m in 60 seconds before crossing the line in 2:01.69. The time bettered Melissa’s own Dome record of 2:02.09, which she used last year as a spring board to qualify for the Olympic Games. Melissa has stated she will make her outdoor debut at next month’s Mt. Sac Relays in Walnut, California as she sets out to qualify for this summer’s World Championships.
Over 1500m, Emma Galbraith continued to make her case for CIS rookie of the year by setting a new open Dome record with her time of 4:20.23. Aided by the pacing of teammates, Emma’s time was the fastest recorded by a junior woman in Canada since 2010. It also moves Emma into the top rank heading into this weekend’s CIS Championships. She will also be competing in the 1000m where she is currently ranked second in the country.
Also enjoying record setting performances in the middle distances were Lucas Trapeau and Owen Day in the 800m. Despite running in a slower heat, Trapeau sped his way through two laps to cross the line in 1:54.87 and lower Mickey Day’s Youth Boys Dome record of 1:56.30. Unfortunately for Mickey, that wasn’t the only one of his records to fall as his younger brother, Owen, shaved 0.02 seconds off his Midget Boys record of 2:02.24, crossing the line in 2:02.22. Both Lucas and Owen look to be in fine form as they prepare for the high school season.
The final record of the day came from Connor Dobson in the youth boys 110m hurdles. Connor’s time of 15.86 seconds was a 0.4 second improvement on Justin Taylor of Pickering High School’s mark of 16.26 set in 2010.
Also competing this past weekend was Divya Biswal who lept to a new personal best of 12.07m in the triple jump enroute to claiming the East Coast Athletic Conference Division III title Friday night in New York City. The second year athlete competing for St. Lawrence University will have a chance to better that mark this Saturday at North Central College in Illinois as she battles for her first NCAA Division III title.

A message from Dome staff:
 

With her season not even finished, rookie Emma Galbraith has already put together a resume that many fifth year seniors could be proud of and on Thursday she added another line to that resume, winning the Ontario University Athletics (OUA) female rookie of the year award.
 
While the award is presented on the merits of Emma’s recent performances at  the OUA Championships last weekend in Windsor, the Franco-Ouest graduate has put together a stellar rookie campaign that has included one Canadian junior record and four University of Ottawa records.
 
On day one of the OUA championships, Galbraith out ran a veteran laden field in the 1000m to win and become one of only two rookies to capture individual gold at the championships. She would return on day two for some speed work as she took to the line in the 600m where she would win her second medal, a bronze, behind Olympic semi-finalist Sarah Wells of Toronto.
 
Next stop for Galbraith is next weekend’s Canadian Interuniversity Sport championships being held in Edmonton where she will compete in both the 1000m and the 1500m where she enters the meet ranked second and fifth respectively.
 
Other OUA award winners on Thursday included former Lions athletes, Yves Sikubwabo and Alicia Brown. Sikubwabo, who is in his first season at the University of Guelph, was named male rookie of the year after finishing second in both the 1000m and 1500m as well as claiming gold in the 4x800m relay. Brown, competing for the University of Toronto, was awarded the OUA Track MVP for females following a personal best and gold medal performance in the 300m. The Merivale High School graduate was also a member of Toronto’s record breaking 4x400m relay team.

The medals continued to flow on day two of the OUA Track and Field Championships as Oluwasegun Makinde and Emma Galbraith continued their success from day one. In total the the Gee-Gees would capture three more medals on day two, bringing their total to nine – one short of the team record 10 from 2009.
Galbraith got things going early on in the day with a bronze in the 600m behind two runners from the University of Toronto including Olympian Sarah Wells. Emma’ s two medals should put her in good contention for an OUA rookie of the year award to be handed out later this week.
In the 60m, Oluwasegun Makinde needed his second best performance of the year, 6.83 seconds, to pick up his second silver of the meeting being edged out by Windsor’s Aaron Bowman. Following that performance, Makinde teamed up with Gabriel Tesfaye, Devin Biocchi and Michael Robertson to bring home bronze in the 4x400m relay. The quartet’s time was just 0.11 seconds off the gold medal and a minuscule 0.003 seconds out of silver.
While not producing a medal, rookie Nelson Cecereu did produce one of the more notable performances with his 4.51m clearance in the pole vault. Despite entering the competition ranked ninth, Cecereu improved to fifth based on his 14cm personal best and new school record. The jump now leaves him ranked seventh in the CIS.
The Gee-Gees will return to action this Saturday at the final Super Saturday Series Meet.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvD18J_he4s&w=560&h=315]

It was a big day for the University of Ottawa Gee Gees on day one of the OUA Track and Field Championships in Windsor, featuring numerous personal bests, two CIS automatic qualifying performances and six medals.
It was rookie Emma Galbraith bringing home the first medal of the day, out sprinting former Lion Rachel Aubry to win gold in the 1000m in 2:49.29. Galbraith will be back in action today as she looks for a second medal in the 600m.
The second gold medal came from Devin Biocchi as he beat a talented 300m field that featured teammates Oluwasegun Makinde and Michael Robertson. Biocchi’s time of 34.33 seconds was three tenths ahead of Makinde, who took home bronze. Robertson was fourth in 34.74.
Makinde picked up another medal in the 60m hurdles, finishing second in 8.13 seconds. He had previously set a new personal best of 8.02 seconds in the heats. Joining Segun in the final were teammates Gabriel Tesfaye and Hubert Chevrette-Belisle, who both ran 8.38 seconds to finish 5th and 6th respectively.
Chevrette-Belisle didn’t leave the track empty handed though, as he claimed his first OUA bronze with a 3570 point performance in the pentathlon. His performance was just two points off his personal best set earlier this year at the McGill Team Challenge.
Second year hurdler Devyani Biswal picked up the final Gee-Gee medal, sprinting to bronze in a new personal best time of 8.56 seconds. Biswal has had a breakout season that has seen her drop nearly three quarters of a second off her time as she looks poised to make a run at Ashlea Maddex’s school record of 8.49 seconds at the CIS championships in two weeks time. Joining Biswal in Edmonton will be rookie Tania Bambi as she ran an automatic qualifying time of 8.71 seconds to finish 5th in the hurdle final.
Also punching her ticket to the Alberta capital was Sarah de Carufel, who sped to a personal best and automatic qualifying time of 7.63 seconds enroute to winning her 60m heat. De Carufel will look to better that time and challenge for a medal today in  both the semi-final and finals.
 

At the 106th Millrose Games in New York City last night, Melissa Bishop continued to do what she does best – run fast. The 24 year old from Eganville, competing in the 600m, dropped nearly two seconds off the previous club standard of 1:29.91, set by Jennifer Perrault in 2012. Bishop was fourth across the line, stopping the clock at 1:27.95, just off the long standing Canadian record of 1:27.63 set by Camille Cato in 1984.
This was Melissa’s third trip to the historic New York event. She had previously been a two time Millrose Games winner, leading the University of Windsor to back to back victories in the collegiate 4x800m.
Following her race, Melissa took to Twitter, expressing her pleasure with the new personal best and that she now has her eyes firmly set on that Canadian record.
While not indicating any further indoor events on her calendar, Bishop is expected to open her outdoor campaign April 20th in the Invitational 800m at the Mt. Sac Relays in Walnut, California.

Reminder to all athletes, the Dome will be open Monday, February 18th (Family Day) from 2pm till Midnight. Practices will run as scheduled.