Track and Field teams clean up at Huskie Salute

The track teams hauled in the hardware at the Huskie Salute.

    Could another golden age for the University of Saskatchewan Huskies Track and Field teams have been foreshadowed?

    On Friday night at TCU Place, Huskie Athletics handed out its Major 7 Awards at the annual Huskie Salute, and four of those honours were claimed by members of the school’s track and field teams. Julie Labach, who was part of both the women’s track and field and soccer teams for her fourth season, claimed the Mary Ethel Cartwright Trophy as the female athlete of the year.

    Kieran Johnston, who completed his second season of eligibility with the men’s track and field team, captured the E. Kent Phillips Trophy as male athlete of the year. Kendra Farmer from the women’s track and field team was named the winner of the Patricia Lawson Trophy as female rookie of the year. Jason Reindl, who was in his first year as head coach of both track squads, won the Colb McEwon Trophy as coach of the year.

Julie Labach, left, was the female athlete of the year.

    The Huskies women’s team won their 22^nd Canada West championship this past season, while the men’s team finished fifth in the conference. At their respective U Sports nationals, the Huskies women’s team finished fifth, while the men’s team finished 13^th.

    Looking back on the campaign, Labach said the highlight was helping the women’s team win the Canada West title for the first time since 2012.

    “Winning that Canada West banner with the team was really, really special,” said Labach, who stands 5-foot-7. “That was the first banner that we won since I have been on the team.

    “Coming from soccer, that is what I miss sometimes about track. You don’t really get that whole team atmosphere. It really felt like we were all in it together and like every point counted and that was really great.”

Julie Labach gives a speech at the Huskie Salute.

    Labach had a memorable campaign personally. As a striker, she helped the Huskies women’s soccer team finish second in the Prairie Division of the Canada West Conference with a 7-3-4 record before falling in a quarter-final match in the playoffs 3-0 to the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds.

    The 21-year-old graduate from Saskatoon’s Aden Bowman Collegiate had a stellar season on in track and field. At the Canada West championships, she claimed gold in the 1,000-metre and 600-metre races and won silver medals in the 1,500-metre race and the 4 X 400-metre relay.

    At the U Sports nationals, Labach won gold in the 1,000-metre race and bronze in the 600-metre race.

    Before the U Sports campaign started, Labach won gold in the 800-metre race and silver in the 1,500-metre race at the Canada Summer Games, which ran July 28, 2017 to August 13, 2017 in Winnipeg, Man.

Kieran Johnston, right, was the male athlete of the year.

    “It was honestly like a dream year,” said Labach. “The momentum kind of started in the summer when I was at Canada Games. I won a gold and silver medal there.

    “It just carried forward into the soccer season. The soccer team had a really great regular season. Unfortunately, we didn’t really go as far as we wanted to in playoffs, but that happens sometimes.

    “Coming into track right off the bat from that first meet, everything just kind of fell into place. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.”

    She said her most memorable individual moment came winning gold in the 1,000-metre race at the U Sports nationals, which were held in March in Windsor, Ont.

    “I do a lot of different events, but the 1,000, which is the one I won gold in, is one of my favourites,” said Labach. “I couldn’t have written that race better than it went.

    “It was like magic. It was really special.”

    Being named the Huskies female athlete of the year provided an unexpected topper.

Kendra Farmer, right, was the female rookie of the year.

    “It was amazing,” said Labach. “I got a little bit nervous when I got up there and saw everyone.

    “It was really, really special. It is really just an honour. There are so many great girls nominated. I means a lot.”

    Labach said she wasn’t sure if she would return to use her fifth year of eligibility. The business student has been accepted into the law school program at both the U of S and the University of Toronto.

    No matter what she decides, she believes the track team can relive its storied past. The women’s team has won seven national titles and the men’s team has claimed five national titles. The last U Sports national championship win for both track teams came in 2005.

    “I think the future is really looking good,” said Labach. “Jason Reindl, this is his first year as our head coach.

    “He has really brought a lot of like life and energy back into the team. We said that our goal like at the beginning of the season was to win a Canada West banner, and we accomplished that (on the women’s side).

    “I think next is a national title. That is what we are aiming for so figures crossed.”

Kendra Farmer gives a speech to the crowd at the Huskie Salute.

    Kaitlin Willoughby, who is the graduating fifth-year star captain of the Huskies women’s hockey team, captured the Valerie Girsberger Trophy as the all-around female athlete of the year for excellence in sport, in the classroom and for leadership. Willoughby likely delivered the night’s most stirring speech highlighting the other nominees for the award she won and telling how much her time at the U of S meant to her emotionally and how important her support system was that surrounded her in family and friends. The speech ended with a bit of humour.

    The humour part included giving a shout out to her boyfriend from the Huskies men’s hockey team in Parker Thomas, who is a fourth-year grinding forward. The two have dated for the majority of their time at U of S. Willoughby, who is the second all-time regular season leading scorer in the history of the Huskies women’s team, said the pair always had a bet on who would score the most points each season and that she always won that bet.

Jason Reindl, right, was the coach of the year for Huskie Athletics.

    Kendall McFaull, who is the graduating fifth-year captain of the Huskies men’s hockey team, claimed the Rusty MacDonald Cup as the all-around male athlete of the year for excellence in sport, in the classroom and citizenship.

    Dylan Mortensen of the Huskies men’s volleyball team won the Howard Nixon Trophy as the male rookie of the year. The recipient of the Dr. Walter Hader Award as student trainer of the year was Rachel Mamer from the football team.
    A tribute video was shown for Lyle Sanderson, who was the legendary Huskies track and field coach who passed away in February.

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

-------

    If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.

Brain cramps do in Blades, Pats cash in with 7-3 win

Sam Steel (#23) and Evan Fiala (#47) were part of Wednesday’s drama.

    The Saskatoon Blades need to play just a little bit smarter.

    For one of the few times this season, the Blades hurt themselves with unforced errors that piled up. The errors prevented “the Bridge City Bunch” from having a chance to have any success against the Regina Pats on Wednesday night at the Brandt Centre.

    The Pats, who are hosting the Memorial Cup in May, cashed in on the Blades mistakes to the tune of a convincing 7-3 victory before 5,454 spectators.

    The bulk of the problems for the Blades came in the second after Pats winger Nick Henry scored at the 4:43 mark of the frame to give the host side a 3-1 edge.

    Shortly after that goal, Blades 18-year-old defenceman Jake Kustra took a tripping penalty by hacking down one of the Pats players along the boards. It was a penalty that didn’t need to be taken, but the Blades killed that infraction off.

    That kill was followed by Saskatoon left-winger Gage Ramsay getting dinged for playing without a helmet. His helmet came off with the play deep in the Regina end, but the 19-year-old decided to drive to the net instead of skating to the bench.

    By now, everyone in the WHL should know you have to skate immediately to the bench, if your helmet comes off during play, and Ramsay was penalized during a moment when his side wasn’t even on the defensive.

    Things continued to pile up on the ensuing kill. Veteran Blades right-winger Josh Paterson crossed the red-line with the puck, but he didn’t clear it into the Regina zone. Instead, he had the puck stolen from him by Pats captain Sam Steel.

    Steel transitioned the play up ice to offensive defenceman Josh Mahura to create a two-on-one. Mahura fed a nice pass across the front of the Saskatoon to goal to left-winger Jesse Gabrielle, who scored on the backdoor chance to give the Pats a 4-1 edge at the 10:51 mark of the second.

Gage Ramsay took a costly penalty by playing without a helmet.

    The Blades went back to the kill a short time later, when rookie defenceman Randen Schmidt took an interference penalty behind the play.

    The Pats scored on that ensuing power play to go up 5-1 on a snipe from left-winger Jared Legien, and things got worse from there for the visitors.

    Blades captain Evan Fiala proceeded to drive Legien hard into the boards behind the Saskatoon net, which started a scrum. Steel skated in to face Fiala, and Fiala got his stick up and cross checked Steel in the face. Fiala then ended up in a fight with Pats centre Matt Bradley.

    Bradley came away with a fighting major.

    Fiala was accessed a major for fighting, a major for cross checking and a game misconduct. The cross checking major will trigger an automatic review by the WHL office for a possible suspension on Fiala.

    At that point, the Blades were done in with their self-inflicted damage.

    Saskatoon did try to battle back. Right-winger Max Gerlach scored inside of the final minute of the second and added his second of the night 32 seconds into the third to cut the Pats lead to 5-3.

    Just 41 seconds after Gerlach’s second goal, Pats right-winger Cameron Hebig scored on a point drive through a screen to put the hosts up 6-3. Hebig would get his second of the night short-handed at the 12:31 mark of the third.

    Mahura and Czech import defenceman Libor Hajek had singles for the Pats in the first period, while Chase Wouters had the lone reply for the Blades in the opening 20 minutes.

    Steel had five assists to surpass 300 points in his WHL career. In 237 career regular season games, Steel has 107 goals and 196 assists for 303 points.

    The Sherwood Park, Alta., product seems to have developed some good chemistry playing with Hebig, who was acquired by the Pats in a deal with the Blades before the WHL’s trade deadline on Jan. 10.
    Hebig, who had an assist to go along with his two goals, went past 200 points in his WHL career. In 244 career regular season games split between the Blades and Pats, Hebig has 91 goals and 111 assists for 202 points.

    The Pats were 3-for-6 on the power play, while the Blades were 1-for-7 with man advantage. Saskatoon has won four of the six head-to-head meetings with Regina this season.

    Overage netminder Tyler Brown made 38 saves to take the setback in goal for the Blades. Brown was acquired by the Blades in a deal with the Pats that included Hebig before the WHL’s trade deadline on Jan. 10. Brown has made two starts for Saskatoon, but the Blades had less than stellar efforts in both those outings resulting in lopsided losses.

Cameron Hebig scored twice for the Pats.

    For the Blades, it would be good to get Brown his first win with the team to ensure the results of his first two starts don’t become some sort of mental hurdle.

    Ryan Kubic turned away 26 shots to pick up the win in goal for the Pats, who improved to 25-20-5 to sit in the first wildcard spot in the WHL’s Eastern Conference with a six point edge over the Blades. Saskatoon has a game in hand on Regina.

    The Blades fell to 23-23-2-1 to sit in the second wildcard spot in the Eastern Conference with a four point edge over the Prince Albert Raiders (18-20-7-2). The Raiders have two game in hand on the Blades.

    Wednesday’s encounter provided a lot of footage for Blades head coach Dean Brockman and his staff to use for teaching purposes. 

    It is hard to give any opponent in the WHL multiple gifts and expect to come out on the winning end of things.

    The Blades return to action on Friday, when they host the Edmonton Oil Kings (13-27-5-2) at 7 p.m. at the SaskTel Centre.

Blades take part in impressive school visit

Jackson Caller, left, and Evan Fiala speak to students on Monday.

    On Monday, the Saskatoon Blade captain Evan Fiala and his defensive partner Jackson Caller made one of the more serious school visits I have ever seen.

    Fiala and Caller visited Silver Heights School along with Saskatoon Police Service officers Mike Johnson and Kelly Rainville as part of Project Face-off. With this program, those four visited East Hastings in Vancouver, B.C., which is one of Vancouver’s roughest neighbourhoods.

    The four shared their experience of their visit and talked about the importance of making correct decisions in life and surrounding yourself with good supportive people. They mentioned a few of the people they met in the East Hastings neighbourhood weren’t your stereotypical “bad guys.” They said a number of the people in East Hastings were persons who once had good lives and ended up in that position due to a major life setback.

    Besides that observation, they talked about the disgusting settings some of the people were living in, which included seeing really large rats.

Mike Johnson, left, and Kelly Rainville talk to school students.

    Before the four spoke, they showed a video of them touring East Hastings to the students.

Fiala and Caller told the students they were able to stay on their paths to the WHL due to focusing on hockey and hanging out with friends that had similar aspirations. They said that helped give them the discipline to stay away from people who wanted to do something not wise and other possible not wise situations.

    In this now the 19^th season I have covered the WHL, I have seen a few school visits, but this is the first one I went to involving the Blades. The stories and the subject matter was heavy, but it was delivered in an impactful way.

    After the presentation, four little girls came up to Fiala. One played hockey with one of the local Huskies Prospects teams, and she excitedly said she wanted to follow through with her dream of playing for the Saskatoon Stars Female Midget AAA team on day. It was a pretty sweet moment considering Fiala’s younger sister, Joelle, is one of the Stars star forwards.

    The Blades made tonnes of these community appearances over the season and worked hard to stay connected with the community. Monday’s visit to Silver Heights School was a perfect example of that.

Back in the Express with Johnston

Kieran Johnston will run at the K of C Indoor Games.

    I was back in the pages of the Saskatoon Express this week with an advancer story for the Knights of Columbus Saskatchewan Indoor Games that was focused around Kieran Johnston.

    The 22-year-old is in his second season with the University of Saskatchewan Huskies Track and Field team. Johnston told a story about what it was like to race Ashton Eaton, who won the decathlon at the 2012 Summer Olympic Games. Eaton would win the decathlon title again at the 2016 Olympics.

    Johnston raced Eaton at the 2015 K of C Indoor Games and admitted to be star struck.

    Besides talking about that race, Johnston discussed how he stepped away from sports all together for a time and came back once he realized he missed the sports. The graduate of Saskatoon’s Evan Hardy Collegiate shared what his hopes were with the Huskies this season.

    The story on Johnston can be round right here.

    If you have any comments you would like to pass along about this post, feel free to email them to stankssports@gmail.com.

-------

    If you like what you see here, you might want to donate to the cause to keep independent media like this blog going. Should you choose to help out, feel free to click on the DONATE button in the upper right corner. Thank you for stopping in.