Thursday at the Western Canada Summer Games in Swift Current, Sask., featured plenty of almost and a dash of how-about-that.
Track and field got underway on Thursday and it started off with a bang as Fiona Huang of Hay River managed to qualify for Friday's final in the girls 400-metre event. Her time of 59.77 seconds was second-fastest in her heat and third-fastest overall. Friday's final is scheduled to happen at 2:15 p.m.
photo courtesy of Rob Hart
Yellowknife's Katie Hart made the transition from the soccer field to the javelin pit and did it rather seamlessly. So much so that she managed to snap a few territorial records along the way in the girls javelin event on Thursday.
Hart's best throw was measured at 32.80 metres, which gave her fifth place overall but also gave her a brand new territorial record in the girls 17U division, besting Claudia Webb's now-former mark of 31.18 metres set back in 1997, which was also the mark in the 19U age class and which now belongs to Hart. It was also better than Tehnille Gard's 18U mark of 32.27 metres from 2010.
Both the boys and girls relay teams narrowly missed a medal in the 4 x 100-metre events on Thursday as both finished fourth.
On the tennis court, the boys doubles team of Nikhilesh Gohil and Ethan Carr will play Manitoba for bronze on Friday after they lost their semifinal to a team from Saskatchewan in straight sets.
The volleyball teams had a mixed bag on court Thursday. The girls opened with a loss to Saskatchewan on the first night of play and followed that up by dropping two more games in straight sets to Alberta and Manitoba. They're back on court Friday morning to wrap up the round-robin versus Yukon and Nunavut. They're both must-win games if they hope to advance to the medal round.
The boys, meanwhile, have had a bit better luck as they opened up on Wednesday against Alberta. They won the first set, 25-23, but were unable to strike while the iron was hot the rest of the way and ended up losing the next three sets straight. They were back on court Thursday to play Saskatchewan, which was a straight-set loss, but rebounded to take down Nunavut in straight sets to find the win column. They're on court Friday morning against Yukon and Manitoba to close out round-robin play.
Wrestling will start up on Friday with the team competitions at 9:30 a.m. Both the boys and girls teams will be up against Manitoba.