By Jon Roe
Cross country team does good
The Dinos cross country team has set a gold standard, taking the double gold in Saskatchewan Sat., Oct. 11.
“Well, it’s always nice to win, eh?” said cross country coach Doug Lamont. “It’s early in the season and we’ve still got a lot of work to do. Obviously it buoys their confidence with a win over most of the Canada West schools.”
Geoff Kerr led the way for the men and Lindsay Winter for the women.
“The biggest thing right now is keeping on training consistently, improving fitness and getting race-sharp,” said Lamont. “Getting race experience [is important] building up to nationals.”
Five Dinos were in the top 15 overall times on both sides. The men’s team posted a combined time of 1:34.99 and the women’s team posted a combined time of 2:17.30.
If you add those two times together, you would get the total time it would take Pink Flamingo Challenge participants and Gauntlet editors, Jon Roe and Chris Beauchamp, to complete a single 100-metre dash.
T-rex returns
A Jurassic monster was unveiled Tues., Oct. 10.
Former Dinos football coach Peter Connellan donated the seven-foot-tall red and yellow T-rex which mysteriously appeared in his back-yard at the end of the 1987 football season.
The dino was nabbed from the Calgary Zoo after the last home game of the ’87 season and placed in Connellan’s back yard.
Connellan recently sold his home and has donated the T-rex back to the University of Calgary where it will now be displayed in front of the faculty of kinesiology’s main office. Though thievery tends to be discouraged, there has been no word yet if zoo officials want the dinosaur back.
Rumoured to be trying to match this feat, six University of Alberta students were apparently mauled while attempting to capture a live bear. Though there may be no truth to this rumour, if the U of A were to accomplish this feat, the U of C would be in trouble because dinosaurs are very hard to capture alive.
Football history lesson
Though the Dinos football team has won exactly zero of their five games this season, history is behind them on getting at least a single win. No Dinos team has gone winless since 1966, their first season, when the team finished 0-6.
The division switched to an eight game season in 1970 and the Dinos have finished with less than three wins only once since then: in 2005 they went 2-6.
The potential is there for at least a single victory in the 40th anniversary season as the Dinos still have to play the 0-5 Simon Fraser University Clan. In five losses, the Clan have only put more than 10 points on the board twice. The Clan have been outscored by 192 points so far, compared to the Dinos who have only been outscored by 100 points.
Though the Dinos offence is anemic–they’ve only scored three touchdowns in five games–they have a solid plus-five turnover margin, good enough for third in the league.
They also have one more game against the University of Alberta Golden Bears, who they lost to by a narrow 17-15 margin in the home opener. The Bears aren’t far ahead. Despite their 3-2 record, all three wins have been narrow. Including the game against the Dinos, the Bears have only won their games by a combined six points.
Wall of distinction
Dinos athletics unveiled their wall of distinction Tues., Oct. 10. Displayed are 1988-93 men’s volleyball player Andy Cameron, 1992-95 football player Don Blair, 1993-99 swimmer Curtis Myden, 1996-01 women’s basketballer Leighann Doan and current women’s volleyball player Joanna Niemczewska.
The wall features six-foot by three-foot action pictures of the five players, and is hidden deep in the enclaves of the athletic department offices in the Kinesiology A Building.