Smith College

Feb. 28, 2011 - Regina Leader-Post

Having won it in 2010, the University of Regina Cougars dutifully took the R.E. DuWors Trophy – presented annually to the team that wins the Canada West men’s track & field championship – to Winnipeg with them for the 2011 meet.

They needn’t have bothered.

The Cougars reclaimed the trophy by winning their second straight conference title Saturday, accumulating 106 points over the two-day meet at the University of Manitoba. The Calgary Dinos were second with 79.

“The team couldn’t have performed better,” U of R head coach Bruce McCannel said from Winnipeg. “Every single person on the roster performed at least to what we’d hope and most of them exceeded it. Going into the weekend, the best I figured we could do was 106 points or maybe 108. We ended up with 106. The whole thing was really good.”

The Cougars led the team competition after Friday’s events and that, the head coach said, was the impetus for the U of R’s second consecutive championship.

“The guys doing well on the first day really sparked us,” said McCannel, who was named the Canada West men’s coach of the year. “After the first night, guys were sitting in the hallway at the hotel, talking over the next day, planning it out and discussing how they could move up to get us points.

“It was really neat to see. It was almost like you could see the team mature over the weekend.”

“We’ve been talking about (repeating) all season long,” added David Walford, whose gold in the triple jump completed his Canada West collection in the event (bronze in 2010 and silver in ’09). “After Friday, we had a pretty good lead on Calgary, so we said if we kept doing what we were doing, we had a good shot at winning – and we ended up winning by 27.”

Walford was a major contributor during Saturday’s action.

Aside from winning the triple jump, the Winnipeg product joined Mason Foote, Ethan Gardner and Tait Nystuen on the gold medal-winning 4x200-metre relay team (which finished in a school-record one minute 27.98 seconds, meeting the automatic qualifying standard for the CIS championships). Walford also contributed points with a fourth-place finish in the 60m.

The third-year athlete wasn’t fazed during the triple jump when he had to leave to run a 60m heat and the 60m final – or when a fire alarm went off, forcing a brief evacuation of the facility.

“The 60’s not a long race, so I don’t mind running it during the triple,” Walford said. “It actually gets me going for the triple. The fire alarm helped, too. It gave me a chance to relax a bit.”

The men’s team, which won seven medals Friday, added seven more Saturday. Jeremy Eckert earned the gold in the high jump (2.11m, meeting the CIS standard). Silvers went to Foote (60m, in a U of R-record 6.77 seconds), Connor MacDonald (high jump) and Chris Pickering (shot put). MacDonald (triple jump) also won a bronze.

On the women’s side, the Cougars accumulated 58 points to finish fourth – up one spot from 2010. The Dinos had 113.5 points to win their fifth team title in the past seven years.

During Saturday’s action, the Cougars’ Nicole Breker won a silver medal in the triple jump. Earning bronze medals were Amanda Ruller (60m), Shalane Haselhan (high jump), Gina Jestadt (triple jump), and the 4x200m relay team of Amber Wylie, Merissa Margetts, Kelsey Bohachewski, and Chelsea Valois.

Next up for the Cougars are the CIS championships, which are to begin March 10 in Sherbrooke, Que.

Athletes qualify for nationals by meeting the CIS qualifying standard at any point during the season, by finishing first or second in an event at their conference championships, or by being ranked in the top 12 in an event. Those rankings are to be released Thursday.