Canadian Operating and Underneath Armour have teamed up for the 2024 Canadian U Sports activities indoor monitor and discipline season to focus on among the prime homegrown skills throughout the nation. For the previous eight weeks, we’ve put a highlight on among the greatest up-and-coming collegiate athletes, and eventually, we’ve reached the largest meet of the U Sports activities season: the 2024 U Sports activities Indoor Observe and Subject Championships in Winnipeg.
All through the season, a whole lot of U Sports activities athletes have crushed their private bests, however this last award will go to a female and male U Sports activities monitor and discipline athlete who achieved a breakthrough efficiency on the U Sports activities championship. Sprinter Emmett Bravakis of the College of Toronto Varsity Blues and multi-event athlete Sienna MacDonald of the College of Calgary will obtain prime honours for the 2023-2024 season.
These athletes might be featured on Canadian Operating and awarded an Underneath Armour prize pack together with the brand new UA Infinite Elite coaching shoe.
Guelph Gryphons win sixth straight U Sports activities Observe and Subject Championships
Feminine Athlete of the Week: Sienna MacDonald–ladies’s pentathlon
Relating to MacDonald’s accolades from the U Sports activities Championships, it’s powerful to know the place to begin. The 21-year-old from Airdrie, Alta., gained the ladies’s pentathlon by a margin of 370 factors, setting a brand new private report of 4,164 factors. She did this whereas additionally competing within the ladies’s lengthy leap and ladies’s 60m hurdles—two different occasions she additionally gained outright (in 8.20 seconds within the hurdles and 6.02 metres within the lengthy leap). MacDonald racked up three particular person gold medals, incomes 30 of her faculty’s 87 whole factors to assist the Calgary Dinos safe a group bronze medal.
“I knew going into the meet that I had a possibility to get triple gold, however it was going to be fairly tough,” says MacDonald on her consequence. “I used to be just a little shocked.”
For MacDonald, she says her principal objective was to compete onerous and are available out of the championships wholesome. “I understand how taxing the meet is on the physique,” she says. “I knew [triple gold] was a risk, however I wasn’t going into it with added stress or expectations.”
When requested if MacDonald’s weekend went completely, she stated no. “I actually needed to get that 60m hurdle report, however for a way drained my legs have been, I’m pleased with the way it all went down,” she says. “My principal objective is to be constant.”
MacDonald is having fun with some downtime to cap off her record-setting indoor season however plans to get again to the monitor quickly. “I’m trying into some worldwide meets in the intervening time,” she says. “Making an attempt to do some occasions exterior of Calgary; as a lot as I really like competing right here, I must see new faces and compete towards completely different ladies.”
Male Athlete of the Week: Emmett Bravakis–males’s 300m
Final weekend, College of Toronto sprinter Emmett Bravakis skilled each runner’s championship dream. Bravakis, not thought-about the favorite to win the boys’s 300m occasion on the 2024 U Sports activities Observe and Subject championships, shocked the sphere by delivering a private greatest efficiency within the heats. He then added one other private greatest 33.72-second run within the last, profitable U Sports activities gold. This victory marked a big achievement for Bravakis, who had beforehand gained silver in the identical occasion final 12 months, and bronze in 2022.
His time of 33.72 seconds stands because the second-fastest 300m time in Varsity Blues program historical past. “I knew I used to be match, as a result of I didn’t must push by the road within the warmth, and I PB’d anyway,” says Bravakis. “I knew after the heats, I simply needed to go run my race, and I might win.”
The second Bravakis came upon he gained gold was every little thing he might have requested for. “I believed it was a superbly executed day,” he says. “I deliberate my season out to peak for this.”
Bravakis’s objective for the upcoming outside season is to take care of the momentum and proceed operating quick. He instructed Canadian Operating he’s aiming to interrupt his 400m private better of 46.51 outside, a feat that would doubtlessly place him for choice on the Canadian 4x400m group on the Paris Olympics alongside Christopher Morales Williams.
You possibly can view the total listing of Athlete of the Week winners from the 2023-2024 U Sports activities Observe and Subject season right here.
