November 10, 2007

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Lancers capture silver medal at CIS championships

Windsor's Andrew Coates - credit Geoff Robbins

VICTORIA - The Lancer men's cross country team put three runners in the top 10 but could not hold off a stiff challenge from the Guelph Gryphons and placed a very credible second place at the CIS Cross Country Championships in Victoria, B.C. The race, held at historic Beacon's Hill Park, was a very tough 10 km race with undulating terrain and running up Beacon's Hill four times.

In the end Andrew Coates finished his GREAT Lancer Cross Country career with a strong fifth place finish. Coates' performance earned him a berth on the 1st Team All-Canadian squad and Coates was chosen to represent Canada at the FISU (World University) championships in France next April.

This was Coates' third first team All-Canadian selection as he capped off an outstanding Lancer Cross Country career with three CIS cross country banners, three first team CIS All-Canadian selections and two berth's on Canada's FISU Games team.

Coates covered the challenging 10 Km course in 31:55 and it was only the fifth year runner's second 10 Km as Coates just opened up the season in October at Notre Dame as he contracted mono this summer and that followed a stress fracture in Coates' foot earlier in the summer.

Dave Weston ran a superb race to finish 8th (32:13) and Deng Marial placed 9th (32:26). Kevin Savard (33:40) finished his Lancer cross country career with a strong 29th place finish, while freshman Andrew Aguanno rounded out the top five scorers's for the Lancers finishing in 30th place (33:44). Aguanno was the fourth rookie finisher in the race which attracted 16 schools from Dalhousie in the East to Victoria in the West. Alex Meyer placed 39th (33:55) and Matt Sinclair 63rd (34:53) to round out the Lancers.

In the team scoring Guelph captured the title with 59 points, the Lancers were second with 79 points while Sherbrooke captured the bronze medal with 11 points.

The women's team placed two members on the second team all-Canadian team as Hannah Eberhard capped off a tremendous cross country season with a 12th place finish , covering the 5 Km in 18:31. Lisa Brooking also captured all-Canadian honours with her 13th place finish (18:34).

Lindsay Manning placed 17th in 18:46, Stephaney Fay 42nd in 19:20 and Jessica Reid was 74th in 19:57 to round out the Lancer scoring. Brittany Moran placed 83rd in 20:14 and last minute replacement Alyssa Thrasher, a freshman from Holy Names H.S., placed 90th in 20:29.

Bethany McChesney, a former two time all-Canadian while at Western Ontario, was forced to withdraw from the race due to a stress fracture.

The Lancers improved on their pre-CIS championship ranking of 5th by pulling down the fourth spot at the National Championships.

The Lancers totalled 145 points just two point ahead of OUA silver medalists University of Western Ontario. Guelph captured the team title with 57 points; University of Calgary was 2nd with 96 points while St. Francis Xavier University took the bronze with 101 points.

Source:

Elisa Mitton
Sports Information Officer
Department of Athletics
University