Sophomore pole vaulter Alicia Rue wasted little time establishing herself during Minnesota’s outdoor track season.
Rue is now the owner of both the indoor and outdoor school records in pole vaulting. She also earned a share of this week’s Big Ten Field Event Athlete of the Week award (with Illinois thrower Aja Evans) after breaking the outdoor school record to win the pole vault competition at the Iowa Musco Twilight Meet on May 3.
Rue cleared 13 feet, 7 1/4 inches, surpassing the previous record by two inches.
The award is Rue’s third Big Ten weekly honor this season as she recorded two during the indoor session. The Minnesota women’s track team as a whole has brought in 10 of the conference prizes during the spring season.
Gophers add one of Canada’s best
University men’s swimming and diving head coach Dennis Dale added a big gun to its arsenal with the signing of Dominique Massie-Martel.
Massie-Martel, a native of Ottawa, Canada, is among the country’s swimming elite.
Not only is Massie-Martel the top-ranked swimmer in Canada in the 200-meter free with a career-best time of 1:48.57, but he shattered a 19-year-old provincial record in the 100-meter freestyle and is ranked second in the country (under-18) in the 100 free with a time of 50.29.
“When Dominique was on his recruiting visit, he was a great fit with our team. Everyone I talked to was saying that he was a perfect fit and he has to be a Gopher,” assistant coach Bill Tramel said. “We are very excited about his potential. He is coming in much faster than our graduating seniors did and we definitely needed to fill this spot. We graduated a very talented and deep group of freestylers this year and to bring in someone of his caliber in the free events eases our graduation losses.”
Massie-Martel is the seventh member of the 2007-08 Gophers signing class. He’ll join Andrew Knaak (Stillwater, Minn.), Paul Tierney (Burnsville, Minn.), Richard Hills (Baltimore, Md.), Zach Bolin (Blue Springs, Mo.), Karl Burdis (Dublin, Ireland) and Keith Yoho (Tomball, Texas).
