On the run to one more 2018 title
The year was 1964.
Bob Hayes won Olympic gold in the 100m; Cassius Clay knocked out Sonny Liston for the world heavyweight championship; Arnold Palmer won his fourth and final green jacket (Masters); Hamilton-born Olympic gold medallist (1906) marathoner Billy Sherring died; the Toronto Maple Leafs clinched their 12th Stanley Cup; and the McMaster Marauders scored a natural hat-trick winning their third consecutive OUA cross country team title.
Fast forward 54 years to 2018. McMaster men galloped to gold at the recent 2018 OUA Championship.
Their fourth title.
Their first in more than five decades.
Individually, 19-year-old Max Turek of Whitby grabbed gold for the Marauders. Only Dave Knox (1964) and Dave Lorne (1992) previously graced gold for Mac atop the podium.
The Marauders are coached by four-time McMaster Female Athlete of the Year and two-time Olympian Paula Schnurr, who was nine months old when Mac won its last OUA title.
In 2017, McMaster seized silver at the OU’s and finished fourth in the nation.
Schnurr knew her boys had a real shot at the 2018 title but standing in their way — psychologically — was the University of Guelph, winners of 15 OUA Championships since 2000.
Schnurr chose a rather unique “game plan” for her talented team.
“I adopted the race strategy from basketball,” said Schnurr. “We would play ‘man-to-man.’ And if each took care of a man then we would win.” And win they did. Members of the 2018 OUA Championship team include: sophomore Max Turek (1st), a Mechatronics and Management Engineering student; junior Sergio Raez Villanueva (7th), majoring in Honours Biology and Physiology; sophomore Alex Drover (8th), an integrated biomedical engineering and health sciences student; junior Josh McGillivray (11th), an electrical and biomedical engineering major; and senior Jonathan Favero (18th), an engineering physics student.
Turek and Raez Villanueva earned OUA First Team All-Star status while Drover and McGillivray were named Second Team OUA All-Stars.
And Schnurr was honoured with the OUA Coach of the Year Award.
The self-effacing coach shared the prize with her teammate/ husband Peter Self, “a huge part of the coaching duties and success of our team.”
“We didn’t want to come in over-thinking the race or believing this was a make-or- break.”
Raez Villanueva said, “Paula gave us more the vibe that it was just ‘another day at the office.’”
But what about all the pressure?
“Paula’s excellent especially in pre-race preparation as she reminds us what we are capable of doing but does not put any pressure on us to do so,” said McGillivray.
And this weekend is the BIG show — the U Sports Championships hosted by Queen’s University.
“We are ready to roll,” said Turek, the 2017 OUA Rookie of the Year and 2018 OUA individual champion.
“We are still underdogs (even though the team is ranked first in the nation).
“We know what needs to be done. We can’t wait to race.”
Indeed. “The work has been done” said Schnurr.
Just call it “business as usual.”
Cecelia Carter Smith is a former four-time Canadian champion in track, a Canadian and world indoor record holder, and a member of the McMaster Sports Hall of Fame and the Hamilton Sports Hall of Fame.