Kodiaks bring home banner at indoor track championships

By Lethbridge Herald on March 21, 2023.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The Lethbridge College Kodiaks men’s indoor track team wrapped up the season by bringing home the banner and medals from the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference (ACAC) Championships in Edmonton this past weekend.

The men’s team took home the overall team banner with 83 points in the event, which was 25 points clear of SAIT.

“Really good,” said Kodiaks coach Simon Schaerz, on the men’s team winning the banner.

“I think we haven’t won since 2015 on the men’s side for indoor track. So it was nice to do that again. We had lots of individual records, team records, as well as conference records and the boys are just incredibly dominant. I think after the first event on the second day, so on Sunday, it became mathematically impossible for anyone else to catch us in the points score. Highlights, of course, are always the relays, and so the 4×200 (metre) and the 4×400.”

Schaerz looked at the team’s depth for success.

“I think just lots of depth,” said Schaerz.

“We had a large team and we had athletes in you know basically all of the events that were capable of winning or at least getting on to the podium. In the past, often times what we (had) to do (was) we (had) to recycle bodies. So you know if somebody that does well in the 300, they’ll also have to rally and do well in the 600. We didn’t have that this year, so we could kind of run everyone fresh in most of the events and I think that was the biggest factor that contributed to our success, is just the sheer depth of the team compared to other teams.”

Gunnarr Gibb highlighted the individual race events for the Kodiaks, as he won the gold medal in the 300-metre event with a time of 36.52 and was also a part of the 4x 200 metre and 4×400  metre teams.

“It was really good to see,” said Schaerz.

“He’s worked really hard. Last year, of course, he was with us as well but he was plagued by injuries. So he didn’t quite do as well probably  as he wanted. He put in a ton of work over the summer and came into the season much stronger and the training really paid off.”

Gibb’s teammate Orin May won silver in the same event.

Owen Stewart won bronze in the 1,000-metre race,  the 4×200-metre Relay team clinched a third ACAC record on the day with a time of 1:35.01 (previous record was 1:38. 01 in 2020) and  Cooper Williams got silver in the 3,000-metre race on day one.

LC’s Logan Danyluk and Jonah Hennig picked up silver and bronze respectively in the 600-metre race to start off the medals for the Kodiaks on the second day.

The Kodiaks 4x 400-metre relay team closed out the championships with a gold medal with a time of 3:33.38.

Maria Boix Frias was seventh  in the 600-metre event, while Rosie Bouchard placed 10th in the 1,500 metre and 11th in the 3,000-metre on the women’s side for the Kodiaks.

Schaerz was named Coach of the Year.

“Yeah, no, that was really nice,” he said.

“We vote on this as coaches at the ACAC Championships. So all the coaches get to vote and to be voted Coach of the Year by my peers is a really good feeling.”

Gibb and Williams were named to the All-Conference team and Williams was named Rookie of the Year.