Uzodinma Ukagwu | Sports Editor
Featured Image: Brittany Crew (left) and Pierce Lepage (right) won a combined five out of York’s six gold medals. | Courtesy of YorkU Lions
The Lions hosted the 2018-19 Track and Field Championships on their home turf, the Toronto Track and Field Center, this past weekend. York showed out, coming away with fourteen total medals: six gold, three silver, and five bronze.
The Lions also finished fourth overall, behind the Guelph Gryphons who won both the men and women OUA banners, as well as the Western Mustangs and the U of T Varsity Blues, who finished second and third, respectively.
Pierce Lepage was the Lions’ star of the event, taking home three gold medals. His first event was on Day 1, when he won the men’s 60-meter hurdles event with a time of 7.96 seconds. Lepage also claimed his second gold later that day by winning the men’s long jump event with a 7.51-meter jump, 31 centimetres more than his nearest opponent.
Already a Commonwealth Games gold medalist after winning the 2018 decathlon event, Lepage easily claimed his third medal of the OUA Championships on Day 2, winning the men’s high jump with a 2.01-meter jump. His outstanding championship performance earned him the OUA male athlete of the week honour.
The men’s high jump event turned out to be a double-podium finish for the Lions, as Jackson West also claimed the bronze medal behind Lepage, with a jump of 1.98 meters.
Brittany Crew, 2016 Olympian, also claimed gold for the Lions in the women’s shot put event on Day 1. Crew broke her own 17.49-meter OUA record with a heave of 17.77 meters, a whopping 2.58 meters further than her closest opponent. Kaitlin Brooks joined her teammate on the podium with a bronze-medal finish at the same event. Christy Ihunaegbo, claimed another podium finish for York on Day 1, finishing second in the women’s 300-meter event and claiming a silver medal with a time of 33.83 seconds, while Leah Jones earned bronze in the women’s high-jump event with a 5.80-meter jump.
On Day 2, Crew returned to claim her second gold of the competition by winning the women’s weight throw event. She again broke the event’s OUA record with an 18.86 meter toss. Crew, a fifth-year student, playing in her final OUA event, claimed her seventh OUA gold medal, in what has been an illustrious York career.
York’s final gold medal of the championships came in the men’s 60-meter dash, but not without some drama. The Lions’ Xavier Joseph claimed the gold with a 6.84-second finish, after his Guelph counterpart had initially been proclaimed winner. Joseph was awarded his rightful win after a race review showed that he had finished a hundredth of a second faster.
In the women’s 60-meter dash, York’s Monique Simon-Tucker finished second, earning a silver medal with a time of 7.68 seconds, behind her Guelph counterpart.
York’s final silver medal came in the men’s pole vault event, as Jason Clare finished just behind Dan Gleason of Western, while Placide Ilunga claimed the bronze medal for the Lions with a jump of 13.71 meters in the men’s triple jump event.
All York’s gold and silver medalists, along with other already-qualified Lions athletes, will now represent York at the national U SPORTS Championships at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg starting tomorrow and running until March 9.
