Claire Meadows
Women’s Basketball
In most places, basketball headlines are made by scoring points, and lots of them. However, Claire Meadows played her way to the Journal Athlete of the Week honours with good defence when women’s basketball travelled to Ottawa for back-to-back games against Ottawa U and Carleton.
Meadows, a fourth-year physical education and environmental studies student, scored 16 total points in the two games, but sured that feat with an impressive 16 rebounds. Meadows credits defence for her individual success this year.
“We are one of the top teams in the province,” she said. “We feed off good defence when the shots don’t fall.”
Meadows was a combined six for 27 from the field on the weekend and said she needed to find solace in other parts of her game. “I tried to get the momentum on D,” she said. “I grabbed rebounds and played tough defence.”
Meadows has been forced to fill the leadership void left by the graduation of record-holders Amy Goodday and Sarah Cameron. Meadows’ guidance has helped the team climb to second in the East division, behind only York, who comes to Queen’s this weekend for a Saturday evening game. Meadows said the attitude of the whole team has helped her lead.
“The chemistry on this team has been great amongst all the players,” she said. “I don’t always feel like I am in the leadership role. It makes my job much easier.”
Meadows is focused on two tough divisional games this weekend against York and Laurentian. She said the key this week is to regain the shooting touch she displayed earlier in the season.
“I must regain focus and practice in game-like situations,” she said.
By working through her shooting struggles, she said she hopes to keep the Gaels on their path toward the playoffs. However, the success of this team is not contingent on just Meadows.
“In of this year, it has not been just one person,” she said. “The team has been critical to success.”
Braden Novakowski
Men’s Track
Braden Novakowski, a former Journal Athlete of the Week, returns to our pages after a surprisingly long absence.
This absence, however, has not been because of poor performance, but because of the time off Novakowski took to battle a back injury suffered over the summer, just after his second-place finish in the 1,500 metres at the Junior Pan American games.
The second-year economics major is back at full health and said he’s ready to perform at a high level once again. Such high-level performance was on display at the track in Toronto when he won gold in the 1,000 metres, running the race in a personal best time of 2:28. Novakowski’s performance is impressive not only because of his long break from competition, but because he was running an event he does not normally run.
“My plan is just to run the 1,500 [metres] and the 800 [metres],” he said. “The 1,000 [metres] is a chance to compete against others and run shorter races to build up.”
Novakowski will be in tough this weekend at McGill against one of the top fields of 1,500 metre runners in the country. He said last weekend at U of T featured a smaller field.
“This weekend’s field will be the fastest field this season for the 1,500 [metres],” he said. “It’s my first chance to run a fast time in the 1,500 [metres], and the guys are excited for a full meet.” In the indoor track season, a runner must meet certain standards to qualify for the national championships. Novakowski said his goal this week is to meet the national standard so he can qualify for post-season races.
“Then after that I can start focusing on running faster,” he said.
Novakowski told the Journal he is excited to be back from his injury and running again.
“I race because I love doing it,” he said. “I am very ionate about the sport.”
Novakowski said he is most excited about reing his teammates on the track.
“It is great to be back in the mix,” he said. “The team was very ive of me during my injury.”
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