Leggatt leads Griffins to strong finish at Huskies Sled Dog Open
Jefferson Hagen / MacEwan Athletics
Despite not letting up in her training cycle, Griffins cross-country runner Hannah Leggatt cruised to a third-place finish at the University of Saskatchewan Huskies Sled Dog Open on Saturday.
Leggatt finished the women's 8K run in 32:57, just six seconds shy of Alberta's Anushree Patel behind winner Courtney Hufsmith of Saskatchewan (30:54).
"Progressively, it was a good run for Hannah," said Griffins head coach Drew Carver. "She felt pretty strong. And the nice thing was when she crossed the finish line, she felt she could have even gone a little faster.
"It's one of those races where if you're not running directly beside somebody, it's tough to push yourself," he noted. "The top runners were all spread out. Roxanne (Skoreyko), who had a great race, found herself where she only had one athlete challenge her for most of the race. She was pretty much running on her own."
Skoreyko had a very solid sixth-place finish (33:27), while Chanelle Gagne (17th, 34:37), Abby Ackerman (22nd, 35:08), Maissa Sabourin (54th, 38:49) and Jocelyn Leffers (56th, 39:16) contributed to MacEwan's women's squad finishing third of six Canada West teams in attendance.
"That's an improvement over last year," said Carver. "It looked like the team handled the course well. The longer distance didn't seem to leave them completely flat."
The women ran 6K races last season, but U Sports has upped the distance to 8K in 2017.
"It's a longer distance, so we've got to make sure we don't over-train for this first little part and find ourselves not being able to hang on to what we've accomplished," said Carver in a marathon – not a sprint – of a season.
"They ran a really good race strategy – most of them took it easy and progressively got faster as the race went on. This is a key part of running longer distances – not to go out too fast early and find yourself struggling. We did that really well."
The one setback for the women's team was that rookie Daniella Wasielewski aggravated a hip injury and couldn't finish the race. The two-time Alberta high school provincial champion will be forced to miss the rest of the cross-country season.
"That was her one race where we were seeing how strong she was," said Carver. "Her hip basically gave out on her, so she's done for the season. That's a big hole in the team. But it's a case of where we stopped the process right now to get her recovered and back for the indoor track season."
Scott Kohlman led the way for the Griffins men's team on Saturday with a 22nd-place finish in the men's 8K race. The second-year competitor's time of 28:31 was an improvement over last year and wasn't too far back of winner Russell Pennock (26:02) of Calgary.
"He was looking good throughout the whole race," said Carver. "We're wanting a stronger finish at the end. He handled that and he looked really good racing in it."
Freshman Aaron Boyle finished 27th (29:07), beating University of Alberta rival Alexandre Bourferguene by a second.
"It was exciting because it was one of those things you didn't know who was going to win until the last step," said Carver.
Kyle Dong (46th, 32:09) rounded out MacEwan's participating athletes.
Next up for the Griffins is a visit to Victoria on Oct. 14 for the UVic Invitational – which is a test race on the same course that will be used for the U Sports national championship on Nov. 12.
