The men’s and women’s track and field teams came up with some big performances at last week’s OUA
Championships, with both teams finishing sixth overall. Queen’s came away with three silver medals,
and 12 athletes qualified for the national championships next week.
“Any time you get more than 10 athletes going to nationals, it’s a pretty good year,” head coach
Melody Torcolacci said. “The team as a whole really stepped it up. I was really happy about that because you want to see people laying it on the line at the championships.” Sprinter Dupe Oyewumi set a new personal best and a Queen’s record with her time of 7.79 seconds in the women’s 60-metre
dash, good enough to earn a silver medal and an automatic spot at nationals.
“I was ranked sixth going in, so I was somewhat of an underdog,” Oyewumi said. “Not too many
people were expecting me to do well, so to come out with the silver edal and the [personal best] was a great accomplishment.
“It’s definitely a load off my shoulders to know that I already automatically qualified and I didn’t
have to wait and see how the other divisions did.” Torcolacci said Oyewumi’s standout performance was the highest finish Queen’s has ever had in the 60-metre event. Oyewumi is in her second
year with the team and has run 24 races for Queen’s this season. Going into the season, she said
she set goals for herself but had modest expectations. “My main goal was just to run [under] eight seconds in the 60-metres consistently,” she said. “I’ve been doing that for the last three or four weeks.” Now, Oyewumi is focusing on the national championships, which will take place next weekend at McGill University in Montreal. “I still have a week and a halfof training before [nationals], so hopefully I can reduce [my] time even more,” she said, adding, “That would just be icing on the cake.”
Queen’s was guaranteed to have at least six athletes at nationals coming out of the weekend from their three silver medals. But seven more Gaels had to wait until the results from the rest of the country were released to find out if they were ranked high enough to qualify.
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