Bisons dominate track and field

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This article was published 27/02/2024 (931 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It may not have been the most dominant championship performance by the Manitoba Bisons men’s track and field program, but perhaps it was the most satisfying in the last three years.

Down two of their top athletes to injury, the Bisons rallied for a narrow 11.5-point victory to capture the program’s third consecutive Canada West conference title at the University of Alberta on Saturday.

The women’s program finished fourth in the conference. High jumper Lara Denbow won gold with a 1.71-metre leap on her first attempt.

The Bisons, ranked No. 2 in the nation, became the first men’s program to win three Canada West titles in a row since the Saskatchewan Huskies rattled off seven in a row from 1999-05. It’s also the first time Manitoba accomplished the feat since 1996, which capped a historic run of seven banners in nine years.

“Once you have some success then it just breeds more success. It just becomes an attitude, a culture,” said Bisons head coach Claude Berubé, who was also named Canada West’s male coach of the year for the fifth time in his career over the weekend.

“We’ve got a great set of clubs that work with athletes when they’re in high school, we’ve got a really good high school program going which has really grown in the last few years, so we’ve kept a lot of our homegrown talent here, and then they’ve just worked hard and pushed each other.”

The Bisons climbed the podium 16 times, including three individual golds and one team gold medal in the 4x800m relay, highlighted by sprinter Jordan Soufi, triple-jumper Daxx Turner and 600m runner Dawson Mann.

Soufi broke his own program record in the 60m preliminary race with a time of 6.69 seconds then shattered it again with a 6.67 in the 60m final. His time also broke a 37-year-old indoor provincial record, set by Rick Jones.

“It’s a very surreal moment to have my name in the record books,” said Soufi, in his fourth year. “There’s been times where you hope you would run that time but that’s not necessarily the case. So it’s kind of like the longer it takes to get that time you want, the sweeter the victory.

“It’s an awesome moment to be able to break my own school record but to also cross a barrier (6.7 seconds) that not many athletes in Canada (have done).”

Meanwhile, Turner reminded the conference why he’s one of the top triple-jumpers in the country, leaping 15.63m to win his third consecutive Canada West title.

“My goal is to win every year at Canada West, so, so far I’m three for three and I was thankful that I could do that, especially with how competitive the conference has become,” said Turner, in his third year.

Now their attention turns to the U Sports Championship, which will be hosted by the U of M at the James Daly Fieldhouse from March 7-9. Turner has won four bronze and two silver medals at nationals and believes this is his year.

“I really think that I can pull it off,” he said. “I’m right there in the conversation and I think I still haven’t put down my biggest jumps yet of the year. The goal is definitely to win going into next week, there’s nothing else really on my mind and I think this is probably the first year going into a U Sports (championship) where I’m just super confident and not worried at all.”

The Bisons expect to field at least 20 athletes in the national meet, though, that number will be confirmed later.

The path to a team championship will be even more challenging without track star Tyler Cox-Yestrau, who ruptured his Achilles tendon earlier this month. Cox-Yestrau is the second-ranked 300m runner in the nation and contributes to the Bisons 4x200m and 4x400m relay team.

Yet, he was also absent for the conference championship, which saw many Bison athletes play above their weight class to earn another banner. It’s what gives the team hope heading into the biggest meet of the season next week.

“Since the fall, I think the entire team has only had one goal on their mind, and that is to win the team championship at U Sports,” Mann said. “This weekend re-instilled that we are (still) right there in the conversation and if we really do everything that we can… we can put together a really good performance.”

joshua.frey-sam@freepress.mb.ca

X: @jfreysam