Former York University Lions student-athletes Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brittany Crew both won medals at the Commonwealth Games in Gold Coast, Australia last week.
 
Humana-Paredes teamed up with partner Sarah Pavan to win the gold medal in the inaugural women's beach volleyball competition, while Crew picked up the bronze in the shot put.
 
The Canadian beach volleyball duo, ranked No. 1 in the FIVB world rankings, got past the Australian pairing of Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho del Solar by a score of 21-19, 22-20 in the final to become the first Commonwealth Games champions in the sport. They rolled through the first part of their competition, winning all five matches and not dropping a set in that stretch.
 
Crew, meanwhile, recorded her best throw of the competition in the sixth and final round to sneak onto the podium in third place. She was sitting fourth heading into the last round with a throw of 17.77m, well below her Canadian record distance of 18.52m, but she pulled off a big toss of 18.32m to win the bronze.
 
Both Humana-Paredes and Crew are former York athletes of the year after putting up tremendous careers as Lions. Humana-Paredes won the award in 2011-12 following a season in which she earned U SPORTS second-team all-Canadian honours, and throughout her career she was a three-time OUA all-star and helped the Lions win the OUA silver medal in 2013.
 
Crew won the trophy in back-to-back seasons in 2015 and 2016 after one of the best track and field careers in York history. In each of those years she swept the throwing events at both the OUA and U SPORTS championships and was named the OUA and U SPORTS field events most valuable performer. She set a new U SPORTS shot put record in 2016 and also won conference and national silver medals in the event in 2014.
 
Crew also represented Canada at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio in the shot put.