Last week was a milestone for McGill Athletics as several teams competed in playoff games and meets, striving to move onto future playoff rounds or to surpass their season bests.
McGill Swim RSEQ conference championship:
The men’s and women’s swim teams dominated their respective competitions on Sunday, Feb. 16, both taking home their fifth consecutive Réseau du sport étudiant du Québec (RSEQ) titles.
The swim teams did not just win: They left their competitors in the dust. The Martlets came in first with 996 points—a more than 250-point lead over the second-place finishers, the University of Ottawa (uOttawa) Gee-Gees. Women’s swimming also saw 28 podiums, winning 13 gold medals, seven silver medals, and eight bronze medals. The team took home gold in all five relays in the competition.
The Redbirds similarly cruised to victory, coming in at 952.5 points, a whopping 367 points ahead of the second-place uOttawa. They secured 13 golds, nine silvers, and nine bronzes, adding up to 31 podiums overall.
While the conference sweep was a collective effort, some swimmers stood out from the pack, with Elizabeth Ling and Loïc Courville-Fortin being named the RSEQ athletes of the week. During the championship, Ling took home six gold medals. Meanwhile, Courville snagged five golds, and broke both the McGill and RSEQ records in the 200-metre individual medley.
Nineteen athletes per team have qualified for the U SPORTS Championship and will head to Toronto on March 6 to round out their impressive season.
Redbirds Hockey OUA quarterfinals:
McGill Men’s Hockey took to the ice Wednesday, Feb. 19 for the first game of a best-of-three Ottawa University Athletics (OUA) Quarterfinal series against the Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières (UQTR) Patriotes. The Redbirds secured the victory 2-1, bringing them one step closer to an OUA Championship.
The fight was far from over as the two teams matched up again on Feb. 21. The Patriotes managed to slip one past Redbird goalkeeper Alexis Shank only 109 seconds after the starting whistle. Shank took this as a personal hit and only allowed 1 out of 31 shots in for the remainder of the game. Rookie Maxime Pellerin turned the match around with 4:40 left in the first period when he tied it up with a wrist shot. Left winger Stephane Huard kept this momentum going, taking a quick shot to bring the Redbirds up 2-1. However, the Patriotes fought back and tied the game 2-2 at the end of the first period—a goal that would be their last of the game.
Mathieu Gagnon and William Rouleau—who recently brought home gold at the International University Sports Federation (FISU) World University Games—each added a goal to make the score 4-2. This score remained until the Patriotes opted to remove their goalie and put six men on the ice with five minutes left, which allowed Redbirds’ Pellerin to tally his second goal of the game on an open net and seal the outcome of the playoff series in McGill’s favour.
This impressive win has upset the standard of the OUA playoffs, as UQTR has won the OUA Championships for the last three years. This victory sets the Redbirds up well as they head to the semifinals against their well-known rivals, the Concordia Stingers, on Feb. 26 at 7:30 p.m.
Martlets Volleyball RSEQ semifinals:
Martlets Volleyball faced up against the Université de Montréal Carabins in the first of a three-game semifinal series on Feb. 21 at the Centre CEPSUM. The fourth-ranked Martlets were successful in their aim to bring down the top-seeded Carabins in the matchup, which ended in a 3-1 victory for McGill. Elyssa Lajmi, who has been a powerhouse for the Martlets this season, led the team with 15 kills and 2 aces. Rachel Leduc and Sandrine Methot also had impressive performances, scoring 11 and 8 kills respectively, to bring the Martlets the victory.
However, with a first-round win in a best-of-three series, it is only too easy to get comfortable. The Martlets fell to the Carabins the following day at Love Competition Hall in a battle that went to five sets. The game was truly a team effort by the Martlets, as it was the first time this season that five players achieved double digits in scoring—Lajmi put up 17, Leduc had an impressive 16.5, Charlotte Chouinard-Laliberte helped out with 15.5 points, and Emilia Grigorova and Methot each added 11 points to the scoreboard. Despite this, the match went to the Carabins, who had a 15-9 victory in the fifth set.
In the third and final series game at Centre CEPSUM on Sunday, Feb. 23, both teams looked for a spot in the RSEQ Championship series. Though the Carabins were victorious in three straight sets, it is a testament to McGill’s perseverance that in the second two sets, the game got closer and closer. While the first set went to the Carabins 25-17, the second set went 25-20 to the Carabins, and the final set was a nail-biting 26-24 Carabin victory.
Track and Field RSEQ Championships:
McGill competed in the RSEQ Championships on Feb. 22, with the Martlets placing third while the Redbirds placed second out of ten teams. Athletes competed in several events, many with the hopes of qualifying for U SPORTS championships.
The Martlets secured two gold medals, with Julie Bortolato placing first in the pole vault and Rebecca Warcholak winning the triple jump. Vanessa Lu Langley scored a silver medal in the 60-metre hurdles, matched by silver medals from both the 4×200-metre and 4×800-metre relay teams. The 4×400-metre relay team placed bronze, as did Kaelie Sanogo in the pentathlon.
For the Redbirds, gold medals came from Luca Nicoletti in the 300-metre, Sacha Dernoncourt in the 1000-metre, Robert Gerstner in the long jump, and the 4-800-metre team who had previously broken the school record in the uOttawa Winter Classic. The 4×200-metre and 4×400-metre relay teams each clinched a silver medal, as did Ben Gates in the 600-metre, Samuel Hepworth in both the 1000-metre and the 1500-metre, and Kilty McGonigal in the heptathlon. To top off the Redbirds’ thirteen-medal tally were bronze medals from William Sanders in the 300-metre and Gerstner in the 60-metre and triple jump.
Between March 6 and March 8, qualifying athletes will compete in the U SPORTS National Championships in Windsor, BC. All athletes who won a gold medal at RSEQ Championships automatically qualify for a spot at Nationals.
