Shelaine Pritchard won her first career U SPORTS gold medal and broke her own University of Regina record in the pentathlon Thursday on Day 1 of the U SPORTS Track & Field Championships in Winnipeg.

Pritchard jumped out to an early lead after placing first in the 11-athlete field in the 60-metre hurdles. Guelph's Rebecca Parker briefly took over top spot after the high jump, but Pritchard responded immediately with a dominant throw of 13.21 metres in the shot put to leap back into first. Pritchard also took top spot in the long jump, then recorded a time of 2:22.47 in the 800-metre run to hold off Parker for the gold.

Pritchard finished with a total of 4187 points, breaking the old U of R mark of 4158 points which she set in January at the Golden Bear Open in Edmonton. Her gold medal gave the Cougars 10 team points as the U of R sits in a tie for fifth place in the overall standings through the first day of competition. Pritchard joins Chelsea Valois (2011) and Joely Welburn (2020) as the only University of Regina athletes to win national pentathlon gold.

Femi Akinloye scored the only points of the day for the men's team as he qualified for the 60-metre dash final and placed sixth with a time of 6.77 seconds. Akinloye's sixth-place finish gave the Cougars three points on the men's side.

Adam Sieben, Akinloye, Colby Halliday, and Brett Franklin teamed up to finish seventh in the 4x200-metre relay preliminaries with a time of 1:27.85. They'll move on to the final of the 4x200, scheduled for Saturday afternoon as one of the final events of the three-day meet.

Pritchard will be busy again on Friday as she's scheduled to compete in the 60-metre hurdles and the long jump in the late afternoon and in the shot put in the evening. Queen Clayton will compete in the 300-metre dash on Day 2, while the men's side will see Brett MacLean and Ian Teichler compete in the 3000-metre run and the 4x800-metre relay team battle in the final event of the day.