Tracksters take tricky trip

By Sean Nyilassy

With their Pumas tied up tight, numbers pinned securely to their jerseys and sports bras and tightey whiteys keeping bounciness to a minimum, a group of 20 athletes from the Dinos track and field team traveled to the Cargill Games at the University of Manitoba Sat., Feb. 4.

Although the only gold from the meet came from the Dinos women’s 4X800-metre relay squad, who won by more than seven seconds, there were many other strong performances. The women’s 4X200-metre relay team was fifth, just under 3.7 seconds back from the top spot. For the men, the 4X800-metre relay runners were third.

Individually, Ariana Binotto was less than a tenth of a second behind the winner for second place in the 300-metre sprint. Another solid sprinter was Adele Smigelski, who placed third in the 60-metre sprint.

In the running events, Renee Kaylor and Shannon Popowich place third and fourth in the 600- and 1000-metre runs respectively. Kim Tse hopped, skipped and jumped her way to third in the triple jump.

On the men’s side, it was the runners who excelled. Travis Saunders and Madison Theriault were third and fifth respectively in the 1000-metre run. Geoff Kerr placed third in the 1500-metre run, just over 1.4 seconds behind the leader. Finally, Trent Ratzlaff was third in the 600-metre run invitational.

The team next heads north to Edmonton to compete in the Alberta High Performance Meet Feb. 11-12. As the name implies, this meet is not for wussies–it’s the last meet before the Canada West Championship.

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