MONTREAL – The McGill men's swim team battled the defending national champion University of Toronto Varsity Blues in a breathtaking head-to-head dual meet at Memorial Pool, Sunday. In a showdown of last year's U SPORTS gold and bronze medalists, Toronto scored 208.5 points, just six ahead of the underdog Redbirds.
More importantly, the event was coined the "A Splash for Purple" and served a fundraiser that collected more than $8,300 for pancreatic cancer research.
" You couldn't script a closer contest which made it exciting and fun for the swimmers." said Varsity Blues assistant head coach
Linda Kiefer. "Rarely was any team more than a few points ahead at any time during the meet, which makes sense with McGill earning their highest finish in 30 years at the U SPORTS championship last season."
The Redbirds won 10 of 18 races at the short-course venue, including four by freshman phenom
Hocine Feddag, who also posted a second-place finish. The 20-year-old sprinter took the 100-metre freestyle (50.67), 50m free (23.15), was part of the winning 4x100 free relay (3:34.84) and tied for first with U of T's
Albert Bouley in a skins race for the 50m breaststroke, where both were clocked with identical 31.31 times.
His silver medal finish was in the 4x50 freestyle relay.
"This was an incredible day," said McGill head coach
Peter Carpenter, whose troops swept the third University Cup of the season on Saturday. "After racing hard yesterday afternoon in Ottawa, our team stepped up the effort in a very tough dual meet situation. Almost everyone raced four times in less than three hours, and I could not be prouder of how deep the team dug in emotionally.
"In the end our women beat the defending national champions and our men came up just short of the Toronto men, also defending champs, who showed up with a huge squad."
Other individual race wins for the McGill men included
Loic Courville-Fortin (200 IM; 2:02.02; and 100 back, 54.57; U SPORTS qualifying time),
Mats Baradat (400 free, 3:58.24),
Erik Linseisen (50 breast, 28.67; and 100 breast, 1:02.36) and
Artiom Volodin (200 free, 1:552.05).
Two of the Redbirds golden performances were in relays, the 4x50 medley. That quartet featured Courville-Fortin in the leadoff spot, followed by
Charles-Antoine Boucher, Linseisen and
Bruno Dehem-Lemelin.
The other was in the final event, the mixed 4x100 freestyle (3:34.84), where
Dehem-Lemelin and
Hocine Feddag combined with members of the women's squad, which included
Elizabeth Ling and
Greta Zapparoli.
The Blues close out the fall portion of their schedule when they host the OUA Stratten Division Championship meet, Nov. 23-24. The McGill women, who have won all four meets to date, will have some time off to train and study for the December exams. They return to competition on Feb. 1 for the RSEQ conference's fourth University Cup meet, in Trois-Rivieres.
"We were so excited by the meet though that we have already started discussion on how to make it an annual home-and-away event in the years to come," said Varsity Blues head coach
Byron MacDonald.
LINK TO WOMEN'S MEET RECAP
COMPLETE RESULTS
SOURCE:
Earl Zukerman
Sports Information Officer
Athletics & Recreation
McGill University
CELL:
514-983-7012
E-MAIL:
earl.zukerman@mcgill.ca
