Jefferson Hagen, MacEwan Athletics
EDMONTON – Testing and trials will be the name of the game for the MacEwan Griffins indoor track team at the Alberta Colleges Athletic Conference Running Room Grand Prix #2 in Red Deer on Saturday.
They are just two weeks out from the ACAC Championship (March 21-22 at the U of A Pavilion) and it's time for head coach Drew Carver to see who is best suited to run each distance when the medals come out.
"The track meet basically just falls in the scheme of the training schedule and it's more or less a time trial to set the team for who is going to be competing in what at the championships," said Carver. "I've got a number of athletes who are good at running the 1,000. I've got a number of athletes who are good at running the 1,500. We don't need to have all the runners in (one of those).
"So, I'll use this as a time trial to split who's going to do what at the championship. That's the biggest thing."
One of the most intriguing trials within the team in that regard is the men's 600 metres. MacEwan has the dominant men's sprint team in the conference, but in order to compete for the men's overall team title, Carver needs to stretch some of those speedsters out to longer distances.
"The biggest thing about it is, I don't want them to race this to beat other guys, I want to see what they can do time-wise and how they can handle that distance," he said of shorter-distance specialists like Thomas Cross-Trush, Connor Swaby and Omar Medina who will be thrown into 600 competitions this weekend to see how they cope.
"The second part is they've got to recover and run the 4x200. So, this is a bit of a learning curve. Guys like Reece (Runco) and Caelen (Begg) did this last year and were quite successful at it. It's a bit of a shift in thinking for Tommy and the other guys.
"If we can come up with a little bit more strength in a few more places, we do have a shot on the men's side. It's a longshot, but at least we're trying."
The other aspect of the Griffins' final dress rehearsal this weekend before the championship is the opportunity to compete in the ACAC's newest event – the 4x200 relay.
"We've only done this once a year ago where we put a men's team together and we ran in Saskatoon and came third amongst (Calgary) Dinos, Saskatchewan and U of A," said Carver. "We beat the U of A, just barely, but it still tells us we have a strong men's team. Hopefully they'll do well."
MacEwan's women's team has the opposite strength of the men's – dominant in the longer distances to the point where sweeping podiums is a realistic possibility.
Between reigning Canada West second team cross country all-star Kiana Row, former CW second team cross country all-star Emma Steele, reigning ACAC female indoor track athlete of the year Ember Large and Ashley Tymkow, the top women's athlete at the ACAC Running Room Grand Prix back in January, the Griffins are favourites to capture a fifth-straight ACAC women's team championship.
That is if they can get enough points in the shorter distance events, so Carver will be testing his women's team in different races this weekend, too.
"We're not planning to go after any records for anybody – just get through this, don't get injured and get ready for the championship," he said. "If we've got athletes who are fit and strong, that's when we start looking at running our best times or running to win and recovering for the next event. That's how we set that game plan in motion."
Saturday's event will take place at the Gary W. Harris Canada Games Centre in Red Deer.
