LANCERS CHASE DOWN MEDALS
Balkwill, Mitton golden at local meet
The University of Windsor Lancers pushed their way into second place in the team standings after the second day of competition at the U Sports track and field championships. Gold-medal performances by Kelsey Balkwill, Sarah Mitton and Rachael Wolfs vaulted the No. 3-ranked Lancers into second overall behind No. 1-ranked Guelph heading into Saturday’s final day of competition.
“We knew (Guelph was) a strong team coming in,” Lancers head coach Colin Inglis said. “They have a lot of depth.
“We’re just looking for our key performances from our athletes to do what they ’ve been doing and so far that’s happened.”
It was a scary competition for the 21-year-old Mitton, who came into nationals as the top seed with a personal-best throw of 16.82 metres. “Honestly, I think it was the atmosphere,” said Mitton, who faulted on her first two attempts. “It was incredible and I was just overly excited and too fast to control and I couldn’t save the throws.” Mitton, who took up the spin throw this year, opted for a standing throw on her third attempt to try to ensure she moved on to the finals and get three more attempts. “I’m quite confident in my standing throw,” said Mitton, who won a silver medal in weight throw on Thursday.
She threw 14.49 metres on that attempt, which was good enough to win the competition, but upped it to 15.09 metres in the fifth round while faulting on her other two attempts.
“It’s not what I wanted to do, but those were 10 points (for first place) we needed,” said Mitton, who saw teammates Leanna Garcia finish sixth and Beth Kester eighth to also pick up points. For Balkwill, it was all about pacing. She ran her qualifying heat in the 300 metres and then turned around to run the final 40 minutes later.
“I think I’m happy with the race,” said Balkwill, who won in 38.46. “I wanted to be faster, but with just an hour to recover, I executed what I needed to do to win.” Balkwill still has the 600 metres to run on Saturday, along with the 4x200-metre relay and 4x400metre relay.
“You always want to go out to do a personal best, but winning was more important,” Balkwill said. “I tactically ran the way I was supposed to.”
Wolfs, who was fourth at this competition a year ago, finally secured her medal. Playing a catand-mouse game with the higher-seed vaulters, the top-seeded Wolfs jumped in and out of the competition and finally took the lead by clearing 4.10 metres. The rest of the field faded away after she cleared 4.15 metres to secure the win.
The Lancers also picked up three points from Stef Smith, who finished sixth in the 3,000 metres in 9:32.52. She also anchored the 4x800-metre relay team with Rachel Crawley, Stephanie Shaw and Alison Robinson, who picked up a point for an eighth-place finish 9:14.84.
Heading into the final day, Guelph sits on top with 80 points, with Windsor next at 51 points and Toronto third with 45. The Lancers are 15.5 points up on Saskatchewan, which sits in fourth place. The young Windsor men’s team, which is ranked No. 9 in the country, sits tied for 16th heading into the final day of competition and still looking for its first medal of the meet.