Miranda Melville captured the top spot and Hope Christie was runner-up in the U20 USA versus Canada Race Walking Dual Meet held on the University of Victoria Track August 16-17.
Melville and Christie will begin their sophomore years at UWP this fall. Similar to their USA National Championship Meet, they once again worked together in the early stages of the race to build up a big margin over third place Heather Warwick of Canada. The more experienced Melville pulled away over the final km to earn the victory. This race was Christie's fourth event ever. Melville's time was 25:44.5 and Christie's time was 26:45.7, each recording career best marks.
The USA Women won the event by a score of 15-7 (the Top three finishers from each country earn scores by their placing, but unlike cross country, other members of each country beyond the top three do not count in the scoring). The USA Men defeated Canada by a score of 12-10. The overall score was in 27-17 with the USA winning the event.
The walkers earned their spots by virtue of their 1-2 finish at the USA Junior Nationals held in June.
This event marked the close of a strong summer of competition for the UW-P Race Walk Team which included Le'erin Voss's bronze medal at the NACAC U23 Championships held in Toluca, Mexico, UW-P assistant coaches Sam Cohen, who finished fourth in the Women's USA Olympic Trials 20 km event, as well as men's assistants Ben Shorey and Stephen Quirke placing seventh and ninth in the Men's 20 km Olympic Trials.
UW-P Head Coach Mike De Witt earned third place finishes in the 5km and 10km Race Walks at the USA National Masters Championships in Spokane as well.
Along with the summer of activity, Melville, Cohen, Shorey, and Quirke each competed at the World Cup that was held in Cheboksary, Russia this past May.
"This group has been very committed to getting their goals accomplished, they worked through the tough winter and competed well at the qualifiying events and then continued right on through the summer," said DeWitt. The collegiate athletes can get pretty worn down by June, but they are stronger now then they were in spring, walking faster than ever and still pretty fresh mentally as well. They are energiezed for cross country in a few weeks. They had excellent role models in the post collegiate members. It has been a very rewarding race walking season in all respects."
Complete results of the USA/Canadian Dual can be found at:
http://www.racewalk.org/results.html
