Griffins kick off indoor track season preparations with Saskatoon competition
Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Winners of three-straight Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference championships and four of the last five, the MacEwan Griffins aren't accustomed to taking a back seat to anyone in women's indoor track competition.
But if ever there was a year for their opponents to be salivating, this might be it.
Head coach Drew Carver doesn't have a single returning member of his women's team.
His dominant sprinting specialists of last year – authors of the first 300m women's podium sweep in ACAC history and multiple conference records – have moved on. His top distance runners from 2018 have either stepped back to focus on academics or have graduated.
"We've got a whole rookie team on the women's side, so this is a real eye-opener seeing how they're going to do," said Carver, whose squad kicks off the 2019 ACAC indoor track season this weekend with a key tune-up event against U SPORTS competition at the University of Saskatchewan.
The nice thing is this is the second time the team has headed into a sport season with an inexperience question. They passed the first test – the 2018 U SPORTS cross-country running campaign in the fall. Emma Steele was the Canada West runner-up for rookie of the year and made the conference second team all-star squad in leading a strong team of up-and-coming athletes.
Steele will try her hand at indoor track and figures to be a factor in leading a team that also includes cross-country teammates Ashley Tymkow, Cassandra Mastel-Marr, Bailey Stang, Daniella Wasielewski and Shaunice Burgers. Joining them are newcomers Kiersten Rajotte and Ember Large, who ran well for the University of Alberta during the 2017 cross-country season.
Not one sprinting specialist in the bunch, but that doesn't bother anyone on the squad.
"It is a rebuilding year. Everyone on the team is totally brand new," said Carver. "I think it's going to be exciting in that we don't know how it's all going to work, but they're excited to try it. The best part about it is putting in some of the short-distance stuff. They're excited to try.
"They've got no idea if they're fast enough. This is the first year I don't really have a sprint team put together; it's going to be all distance runners. The thing about it is some of the distance runners do have the ability to run pretty fast. They just don't race it normally."
At this weekend's Huskies Sled Dog Open meet, Carver will enter them in a variety of race distances to ensure they all have a seed time that can be used for the ACAC Championship (March 15-16 at SAIT in Calgary).
"We'll figure out who's strongest where and we'll place them at provincials in the right race," he said. "This is just to take them out and see how they do."
Things are more confluent on the men's side for MacEwan's ACAC runner-up team to SAIT from a year ago. Top sprinters Thomas Cross-Trush and Reece Runco – who finished second and third, respectively in the men's 300m at the 2018 ACAC Championship – and 2017 ACAC indoor track athlete of the year Scott Kohlman return to anchor a strong side that will contend in the team competition again.
Kohlman, a workhorse for the Griffins in the middle-distance events, and rookie Owen Guenette, who wasn't far off of Kohlman's times in the cross-country season, will handle the endurance while Omar Medina and newcomers James Begg, Connor Swaby and Andrei Pop will solidify MacEwan's sprinting group.
"This event won't have any of the SAIT runners, this is going up against the University of Saskatchewan and Regina, and seeing some of the strengths that they have," said Carver.
"This is not an easy competition for anybody. But I'm looking forward to it. It's a little bit exploratory and we'll see how everything goes."
The Griffins will host the first ACAC Grand Prix of the season – the MacEwan University Invitational on Jan. 26 at Kinsmen Field House (events start at 9 a.m.).
