The Trinity Western Spartans won six medals at the Canada West track and field championships over the weekend in Saskatoon.
Fiona Benson won gold in the 1,500m event and silver in the 1,000m race.
Calum Innes also won gold, winning the 60m hurdles race.
Benson, Innes and Nuttall qualified for the CIS national championships with their performances.
High jumper Emma Nuttall found the podium with a silver medal performance and Blair Johnston took home bronze in the 1,500m event.
And Jake Powrie took third in the pentathlon.
The Spartans track and field program is in just its second year.
“Having these athletes earn medals so early in their university careers is just so great for the long-term growth of our program,” said coach Laurier Primeau.
“But like yesterday, while we’re proud of our accomplishments, we’re looking forward so that we can be better and start competing for team championships as well as the individual accolades we are earning now.”
As a team, both the Spartans men’s and women’s teams finished seventh out of eight teams, respectively.
Trinity Western had two graduating seniors running their last race as Spartans this weekend. Marissa Ratzlaff – who started her Spartans career with the women’s soccer team before moving to the track and field team last year – finished 22nd in the 1500m event in a time of 5:10.52 while Jason Carwile ran his last two races Friday, finishing 10th in the 1000m in 2:33.89 and helping the Spartans 4x800m team to a fourth place finish with a time of 7:54.89.
Amongst other top 10 performances from Trinity Western athletes were first-year Jake Powrie finishing sixth in the high jump, clearing 1.82m, first-year Alex Love finishing sixth in the pole vault with a day’s best of 4.06m and first-year Eric Dupuis finishing eighth in the triple jump with distance of 13.09m.
Along with Benson and Ratzlaff, the Spartans had two other athletes competing in the women’s 1500m as second-year Alison Jackson finished 13th in 4:53.19 and first-year Nikki Bell finished 23rd in 5:11.75.
Second-year Andrew Ott finished 17th in the 600m event with a time of 1:26.02.
First-year Calum Innes finished eighth in the 60m dash preliminary race with a time of 7.08, qualifying for the finals, but did not race in the final due to a nagging injury.
Trinity Western finished the Canada West track and field championships with six medals in total. On Friday, Innes earned gold in the 60m hurdles, Benson won a silver in the 1000m and Powrie grabbed bronze in the pentathlon.
At the post-event awards banquet, Nuttall was given honourable mention for Canada West Female Rookie of the Year and Female Field Event Athlete of the Year, Innes was given honourable mention for Male Rookie of the Year and Male Track Athlete of the Year and Benson was given honourable mention for the Female Community Service Student-Athlete of the Year and Female Track Athlete of the Year.
