By Hillary Clark (Elliot Lake/) & Lucas Baranoski (Waterloo/)

The Warriors were divided up across the province for the last weekend of the regular season before the upcoming OUA championships in Windsor, ON. A small team traveled to Ottawa, while most others competed closer to home in Toronto and Guelph.

On Friday, February 16th, at the Hal Brown Memorial in Toronto, ON, the team had numerous outstanding performances. The jumpers soared to some impressive personal bests, such as high jumper Mason Brussee (Fort Macleod/) who cleared 1.95m to rank him 9th in OUA's going into championship season. Brussee will look to earn some points next weekend against the province's top competition. Biomedical engineering student, Gloria So (Markham/), has been making huge improvements this season and continued that trend this weekend with a best jump of 5.37m in long jump for 2nd place. The women's 4x200m relay team, consisting of Brielle Fernandez (Hong Kong/Hong Kong), Celia Markovinovic (Puslinch/), Emmanuela Odukoya (Scarborough/) and Abieyuwa Edison-Edebor (Newmarket/), took the win in a season's best time of 1:44.71 with incredibly strong runs from each athlete. Odukoya, a life sciences major, also ran a personal best of 43.17 in the 300m for 2nd place overall.

The following day, the team traveled to Guelph, ON for the Guelph Last Chance. Second year athlete Abieyuwa Edison-Edebor (Newmarket/) set astonishing personal bests in each of her events. She came away with a pair of 2nd place results in long jump with a best jump of 5.37m and 60m hurdles with a time of 9.40. The women's 60m dash was led by Brielle Fernandez (Hong Kong/Hong Kong) who finished 2nd overall and the men's team was led by Dennis Dansu and David Gbenjo (Kitchener/) who tied for 9th overall. Steven Mu (Waterloo/), second year computer engineering student, had a solid best jump of 13.43m in triple jump for 4th place overall. Cavan Evans (Windsor/), first year biology student, jumped very close to his season's best with 6.32m and 4th overall.

Whilst this was happening closer to home, the men's relay teams took a very serious business trip to Ottawa, for the Carleton Ravens Last Chance meet. To open up the weekend, the men ran a phenomenal 4x200m relay, putting up a season's best time of 1:28.58 seconds, and crushing the competition! The awesome performance was led by Ben "le citron" Lemon and team captain Lucas Baranoski (Waterloo/) who both put up massive pbs with Baranoski clinching a top 5 performance of all time in UW history with his 21.7 split time. This stellar team performance propelled the boys into a 7th place spot in the U SPORTS rankings, solidifying themselves as a top contender in the OUA championships coming up this weekend. They are also the 7th fastest 4x200m team in UW History.

After a hearty Boston Pizza fueled celebration the men were back at it again on Saturday. Opening up the events for the day was Owen Babcock (Kitchener/), a veteran Waterloo athlete turned coach turned athlete again put all his experience on the line in a heated 600m event. After opening up a phenomenal first 400m, Babcock had to give it everything he had for the last 200m clinching a razor tight second place and securing a top 3 spot in the U SPORTS standings! Owen's spectacular display of grit and determination was the culmination of years of hard work that landed him a school record, crushing the UW record by almost 2 seconds, all with the former record holder, Josh Lorentz, in attendance! Owen's spectacular performance boosted team morale and momentum heading into the final event of the day, the Men's 4x400m relay. At this point the job was only half complete, a great deal of pride and U SPORTS qualification was riding on this performance. With an outstanding opening leg from Ben Smith (Guelph/), clocking in a sub 50 second time, the men were in great shape to pull off the victory. The Ben to Ben connection was firing this Saturday, with Ben Lemon (Waterloo/) running a whooping 48.7 second leg, a 3rd place all time in UW history relay split. Handing the baton over to Lucas Baranoski (Waterloo/) who came out of the exchange like he was shot out of a cannon Lucas extended the massive lead that Lemon had opened up and got the baton to the now school record holder Owen Babcock (Kitchener/). Owen Babcock (Kitchener/) took care of business, running a blistering 48.3 second relay split, crossing the line with no one else in sight and propelling the boys to a top 6 ranking in U SPORTS. The men's time of 3:17.61 provides enough leeway that they should feel confident they will be heading to Manitoba, and managed to run a 2nd best all time performance in UW history for the 4x400m relay! 

The Warriors are locked and loaded heading into Championship weekend. With so many more personal bests and some silverware to come, OUA's is shaping up to be a massive 2 days for the Warriors!