In their second official meet of the track and field season, the University of Saskatchewan Huskies team had a great performance in Edmonton, Alta. at the Golden Bear Open.
After opening up the season at home at the Sled Dog Open — where the team captured 12 medals, with six being gold — the Huskies one-upped themselves with seven golds and 12 overall medals in the meet that took place on Jan. 29 and 30.
One of the top performances of the weekend belonged to the 4×200-metre relay team, consisting of Adam Paslawski, Jared Olson, Graham Black and Garrett Peters. The squad took home the gold medal in the event, posting a time of 1:27.77 — which broke the meet record, the Alberta indoor track record and a Huskies program record for the fastest time ever posted in the event.
Olson, a business major in his fifth and final season on the track team, says the record-breaking run is his favourite moment in his entire track career to this point.
“This is my final year here and it’s definitely the highlight. We’ve never ran that fast — the Huskies have never ran that fast. I don’t think I’ve personally ever ran that fast in that kind of atmosphere before,” Olson said.
Olson, Peters and Black have been running together for a couple seasons and are now making waves in the Canada West track scene. Olson hopes this meet can be the springboard for plenty more of success for the team.
“It really puts all of our work we’ve done in the past few years — it just shows what we have done. That was definitely the best race we’ve ever had and it’s something to build off of the rest of the year,” Olson said.
Not stopping there, Olson also snagged another gold medal in the 60-metre hurdles event, crossing the finish line with a time of 8.45 seconds. Black also had a good weekend haul, adding a second gold in the 300-metre dash event, finishing with a time of 34.14. Cole Digel also claimed individual gold with a dominant showing in the heptathlon — a combination of 10 track and field events — with a score of 4716 to easily take first place.
On the women’s side, Olena Olenick took home the gold in weight throw. Her winning throw was 17.01 metres and she is looking to build off of her Canadian Interuniversity Sport silver medal from last season. Astrid Nyame cruised to a gold medal in the pentathlon, winning by over 500 points with a score of 3706. Rounding out the gold medal winning performances was the 4×800-metre relay team who finished with a time of 9:18.89. Julianne Labach, Sophia Zemlak, Mackenzie Chartier and Tye Buttner were the winning runners on the team.
With a strong showing to begin the season, the men’s team is currently ranked seventh in the CIS, while the women’s team is ranked eighth. After a disappointing result at the past CanWest championships, both teams will look for a better result this year. The Huskies will host the conference championships on Feb. 26 and 27.
With both the men’s and women’s teams are off to hot starts, Olson is hoping it’s the start of something big for the track and field teams this year.
“It’s definitely a big confidence booster for the whole team, especially since on paper we have a good enough points score to win the championship. So we’re hoping to complete that at home and bring the banner back.”
At the CanWest championships, every athlete will be competing for a spot at the CIS championships in March, which will take place at York University, in Toronto. Finishing in the top two in an event, meeting the standard time or score or placing top 12 in the CIS allows you to qualify for the national meet.
With the conference and national championship still in the distant future, Olson will be telling his team to take it one day at a time and making sure they get better every day.
“We have to keep a level-head and stay healthy and to not get ahead of ourselves,” Olson said. “There’s still a lot of season left and if we really want to go for that ring, then we have to do all we can to make sure we’re at our best come March.”