By Earl Zukerman
The York Lions and Guelph Gryphons captured the respective men’s and women’s titles at the 19th annual McGill Team Challenge track and field meet, held at the Richard Tomlinson Fieldhouse, Jan. 24-25.
Sixteen records fell at the two-day competition, including 10 meet standards and a half-dozen fieldhouse marks. Billed as the largest indoor meet in Canada, the event drew 30 university teams and a record 893 athletes, including eight Olympians.
As expected, Santos Zguelin, a silver medalist at the 2012 London Olympics, won his two races. The native of the Dominican Republic broke the fieldhouse record in the men’s 600 metres with a time of one minute, 16.90 seconds. He also claimed a special elite 300m race in 33.27, missing the fieldhouse record of 32.95.
Guelph’s Ross Proudfoot smashed four records, claiming fieldhouse and meet marks in two events, he posted a sizzling 8:02.78 in the 3000m which destroyed the fieldhouse mark of 8:07.38 set in 2010. Proudfoot’s other milestone was in the 1500m, where he clocked 3:44.08 to supass the previous best of 3:45.71.
Guelph led all schools with a combined 20 medals between their men’s and women’s squads, claiming eight golds, six silvers and a half-dozen bronze. They edged out York, which captured 14 total medals, including six golden and three silvers.
McGill, which finished 11th in the men’s division and 12th on the women’s side, posted silver medal performances from Caroline Tanguay and Dylan Golow. Tanguay, a 20-year-old physical therapy sophomore from St. Hubert, Que., achieved a height of 1.72m in the women’s high jump. Golow, a 20-year-old neuroscience junior from Barrie, Ont., collected 3,495 points in the men’s pentathlon.
McGill’s next event on their schedule is the New York Collegiate Invitational at the Armory in New York City, Feb. 7-8.