The York University Lions track and field team participated in their last chance meets at the University of Toronto and University of Guelph this past weekend. These were the athletes' final opportunities to improve their individual and team rankings before OUA championships next weekend.
At U of T Friday night, the Lions recorded many impressive finishes. The Lions swept the podium in the women's 60m dash, with
Monique Simon-Tucker,
Georgia Campbell and
Diana Boa finishing first through third, respectively. This podium sweep was almost repeated in the men's 60m dash, where
Quinn Charles and
Sodiq Ibrahim finished first and third, respectively.
The Lions saw more success in the men's 300m, where
Daniele Orsini won the event and
Zeon Bass finished third, while
Heniesha Christie finished third in the 60m hurdles with a season's best performance of 9.37 seconds.
Rasheeda Gurley won the women's long jump with a jump of 5.31m.
Nicholas Mills and
Ryan Mitra had a one-two finish in the men's long jump, with jumps of 6.39m and 6.27m, respectively.
Tim Sirisombath won the silver medal in the men's triple jump after putting in a jump of 12.86m.
Second-year
Jason Clare earned the silver medal in the men's pole vault, jumping 4.80m.
The women's 4x200m relay team of
Nicolette Witherspoon,
Marvelous Agbonwanaten,
Diana Boa and
Courtney Dwyer won the gold medal uncontested, finishing with a time of 1:43.53. The men's 4x200m relay team also won gold in a time of 1:31.85. The team comprised of
Xavier Jehovah,
Quinn Charles,
Dereck Djan and
Xavier Joseph.
To round out the gold medal finishes for the night, the men's 4x800m relay team won the event uncontested in a time of 8:16.74. Competing on this team were
Brock Martin,
Joshua Ching,
Victor Nouges-Salkowski and
Ali Ghadghoni.
Similar successes were had in Guelph on Saturday.
Team captains
Holly Pitters and
Nicholas Fyffe both earned silver medals in the long jump, Pitters in the women's event with a jump of 5.85m and Fyffe in the men's with 7.11m.
Jumping her way to a silver medal,
Bailey Francis put in a personal best jump of 11.63m in the triple jump to move up to sixth place in the U SPORTS rankings.
Rounding out the medals was
Drew Erskine, who finished second in the mixed weight throw.
The Lions will next head to Windsor, Ont., to compete in the OUA championships on Friday and Saturday and have their sights set on a championship banner.
