CAMROSE, Alta. – For the fourth straight year, the UBC Thunderbirds are men's Cross Country Champions while the women have earned a sixth straight podium finish as the 2024 conference silver medallists in Camrose, Alberta.
Led by
Jaiveer Tiwana's second consecutive bronze medal finish, the T-Birds men boasted three finishers in the top nine for a total team score of 64, a 19-point gap ahead of the runners up from Victoria.
Holly MacGillivray made it a double individual bronze for the blue and gold as the fourth-year T-Bird improved upon her fifth place finish in 2023 by two places.
Rachel Mortimer gave UBC two in the top eight individual finishers on the women's side, amassing a team score of 52, just seven points back of the conference champion Vikes.
"That was a really good step forward and a really good sign that the team is peaking well for the national championships," said UBC Lead Endurance Coach,
Steve Weiler, who was also named Men's Coach of the Year. "I think it's also fair to say the Canada West conference has got a little bit stronger this year."
Completing the eight kilometre race in 25:42.2, Tiwana finished less than ten seconds behind the individual gold medallist from the Alberta Golden Bears. Second-year Thunderbird
Maximilien Filion claimed eighth overall with a time of 26:11.9 in the field of 85 total competitors. Less than a second behind was teammate
Sacha Schimmelpenninck in ninth.
"It was a very hilly course and so everybody had the game plan to go out conservative and then pick up in the second half," said Schimmelpenninck who was competing in his first race of the season after dealing with a minor injury. "I think it was a lot of trusting in the training that we've done and also trusting that we can go out a little bit more conservative and still finish where we wanted to."
"I've been part of the last three (CW championships) and this one tastes the sweetest because we were definitely not favoured and we had a couple guys missing. On an individual level I'm quite glad where I was able to put myself but the team really performed well. A lot of determination and we're very happy with how it went."
Dylan Uhrich finished the course in 17
th position with
Jonah Brost rounding out UBC's top five scorers in 27
th.
MacGillivray's bronze medal time of 29:55.7 led the blue and gold whose scoring five all finished within the top 16 out of 55 runners.
Mortimer's eighth place finish gave the fourth-year T-Bird back-to-back top ten finishes at the conference meet.
"I had some uncertainty at the beginning of my season so just to be able to be on the line healthy and feeling strong and feeling like things are progressing is a huge confidence boost for me," Mortimer said. "I think each race I do I just build upon that. I think we can definitely take what we did today as a positive step forward. We're definitely building momentum going into U SPORTS but we're going to have to keep humble and hungry over the next couple weeks and just keep working hard and I think things can keep coming together."
Amelia Pfohl,
Abby Ylipahkala and
Jennifer Erickson completed UBC's top five on the women's side, finishing the Stoney Creek Park course in 11
th, 14
th, and 16
th places, respectively.
The two laps on the four kilometre circuit proved to be a challenge both in terrain and unfamiliarity for UBC, but the 'Birds credit solid preparation for avoiding any pitfalls on the day.
"It was definitely an intimidating course on paper but I think we took a lot of time to reframe our mentality about the course and I think that really helped everyone have confidence and trust in their training going into it," Mortimer added. "I also feel doing this together as a team, it's such a great group of girls and it's so much easier to find a little more fight in you when you're doing it for them. Especially on such a hard course like this that really pulled me through today knowing those efforts were for them as well as myself."
Saturday marked the final time this collegiate Cross Country season the T-Birds will travel out of province as the upcoming U SPORTS National Championship race takes place in Kelowna on Saturday, November 9. UBC heads to the Okanagan as both the men's and women's defending champions following 2023's historic banner sweep.
FULL CANADA WEST CHAMPIONSHIP RESULTS
