Day three of AUG action, and it was once again hot conditions. A host of individual athletes secured medals for Sydney whilst many teams also set themselves up for semi-finals tomorrow.
It was a golden day for Sydney University Athletics Club (SUAC) with gold medals for Jin Su Jung in the men’s 100m, Anneliese Rubie in the 400m and Jenny Blundell in the 1500m backing up from her 800m win yesterday. Michelle Jenneke also did the double, taking out both the 100m and 100m hurdles while the men’s and women’s 4x100m relays both finished well ahead of the rest bringing in another round of gold. At the close of the third day SUAC is ranked first in the overall point score, well ahead of the competition.
At the pool, conditions were cooler than the Brisbane track and Scott Talbot’s squad took full advantage, collecting four medals (three silver and one bronze):
Michelle Troup kicked off a fast afternoon with a third place finish in the women’s 50m freestyle winning the bronze medal behind Olympic Gold medallist Melanie Schlanger.
Up next in the 50m butterfly Nathaniel Romeo, picked up another silver (backing up from his silver in the 100m butterfly yesterday) narrowly missing the gold medal by less than 2 tenths of a second. The St. Andrews College swimmer recently won the national championships in this event, and has swum strongly at AUG, showing he has great potential for the near future.
Keelan Bridge, who came into the meet with a pinched nerve in his shoulder, overcame his injury to swim through immense pain and pick up the silver medal in a tight race between himself and Australian Olympian Matson Lawson in the 100m backstroke. Silver was also the colour of choice for our men’s 4x100m freestyle relay. In a tight race, Matthew Kan anchored the relay to touch out Melbourne University and University of NSW (UNSW) for the minor placings.
Back on land our cricketers are through to the semi-finals undefeated after a win over Melbourne University; and our undefeated women’s basketball team continued to dominate, defeating Macquarie University by 26 points in their quarter final game.
At the soccer the women’s team kept up their excellent form with a 3-0 win over University of Technology (UTS) before a resounding defeat of Adelaide University 7-0 in the quarter finals. With the semi-finals tomorrow the girls are looking good to take out the tournament. The men’s team got off to a great start early in the day defeating UTS 3-0 to see the team repeat their 2012 performance of topping their pool. Later, the men played University of Western Sydney (UWS) in a quarter final game that delivered plenty of excitement where Sydney University Football Club (SUFC) dominated for the majority of play before two defensive errors ultimately saw the team defeated 1-2.
Despite some injury concerns our touch teams continued to be a highlight of AUG with the men’s, women’s and mixed teams all securing spots in the semi-finals. Women’s badminton had a double victory today beating Griffith 5-0 and RMIT 4-1.
The form of men’s hockey continued to gain momentum with two wins over both RMIT and Adelaide University meaning it will come down to the wire tomorrow against the University of Queensland to determine if they will move through to the quarter finals. Also left with a nervous wait is our men’s water polo team who will have to wait for final pool game to be played tomorrow before they will know if their resounding 11-3 win today over Newcastle University will secure them a finals berth.
