With team veterans and Québec natives Tristan Routhier and Shelley Hladin leading the way, the Laurentian Voyageurs indoor track & field team kicked off the 2024-2025 schedule with a strong showing at the York Holiday Open Indoor Track & Field Meet last weekend.

A fourth year architecture student at L.U., Routhier is set to take serious aim at the school record in the 300m dash, earning gold with a time of 35.75 seconds at York. Not only did he qualify for the OUA championships in his first race of the year, Routhier posted an early season time that was just 5/100th of a second off his personal best clocking.

A second year student majoring in Criminology, Shelley Hladin recorded a best distance of 5.24 metres in the long jump, finishing 7th overall in the field but also qualifying for university provincials that will take place February 8th and 9th at the University of Toronto.

Joining Routhier and Hladin at that event (so far) are teammates and srpinters Josh Kim and Skyler Savage-Perreault, with the local products posting best times of 7.26 seconds and 7.25 seconds respectively to hit the OUA standard.

Narrowly missing the mark at the 300m distance was freshman Evan Jarvis, who finished sixth in 36.91 seconds, with Lockerby graduate Alissa Diavolitsis equally as close with her time of 43.37 seconds (4th place).

"With the challenging weather conditions, we arrived with limited time for a full warmup - but everyone got down to business and the OUA qualifying performances started rolling in", noted Vees assistant coach and lead sprints and jumps coach, Jim Taylor.

"We are very really pleased with our team's fortitude today."

Also representing Laurentian at the competition were Maeva Sullivan, Naomi Palmer, Erika MacNeill, Abdul Abiodun and Delali Afidenyo, with the team set to return to action in the new year, attending the Can-Am Invitational at the University of Windsor on January 10th and 11th.