By Jeff D'Andrea

St. Mary’s Strauss wins gold against University athletes

Jan 18, 2016 | 4:29 PM

If it wasn’t promising already, the track and field future for Austin Strauss just got even brighter.

As a Grade 12 student at St. Mary, Strauss beat out University and senior track club racers at the 2016 Sled Dog Club and University indoor track and field meet in Saskatoon Jan. 14 through 16.

Strauss won gold in the 300-metre race with a time of 35.63 seconds finishing ahead of William Chamney of the University of Regina Cougars and Kyle Donsberger of the Saskatoon Track and Field Club.

“No not at all, I wasn’t expecting gold,” Strauss said. “It feels amazing, it feels really great. I hope I can continue to do that and stay at the top of my game. I have great track coaches. I managed to pull out [personal bests] in my 300 and my 600 [metre races].”

“We knew going in there that Austin Strauss was the top 400-metre runner in the province for his age,” St. Mary coach Kelly Prins said. “We knew that he was one of the top overall runners in the province, regardless of age group at that distance. We knew that he would have a good run.”

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Strauss also anchored St. Mary’s 400-metre relay team to a bronze medal. He and three other runners managed to keep up with University relay teams. Prins said he was quite pleased with the team’s performance in the race.

“It was really nice to know we could come together as a team,” Strauss said. “We’re just a little high school team going up against all these university guys. For us to place third, we were pretty pumped. It was awesome.”

Now in his Grade 12 year, Strauss has received some interest from postsecondary institutions for scholarship opportunities. Although he hasn’t made a firm decision yet, Strauss has a general idea of where he’ll go.

“Right now, I’m kind of leaning towards staying in Saskatchewan,” Strauss said. “The U of R or the U of S would be great.”

Strauss isn’t the only one in his family that has a future in track and field.

His younger sister Taylor won a pair of medals as well; gold in the youth women 60-metre and silver in the youth women 300-metre races over the weekend as well.

In total, St. Mary won 11 medals.

Kiersten Kalmakoff, gold medal in bantam girls long jump, silver medal, bantam girls 60-metre hurdles

Jessica Mascho, bronze in women youth pole vault

Youth women relay team, silver in 4×100 metre relay

Ian Leach, bronze, midget boys 300-metre

Kaden Nilson, silver, youth men 600-metre and bronze in 1,000-metre

Mitchell Jones, silver, youth men high jump

jdandrea@jpbg.ca

On Twitter: @jeff_dandrea