A small contingent of Irish runners journeyed to Canada this weekend to compete in the Windsor Team Challenge.The Irish only sent a few sprinters and hurdlers to the meet, held at the University of Windsor in Ontario, where Notre Dame competed against the University of Detroit, the University of Windsor, Western Ontario, the University of Guelph and York University.Assistant coach Tim Connelly explained the reason behind sending only a few runners to the meet."The conference meet is next week, and we didn't want to send everyone up for this meet," he said. "We needed to get our sprinters some more work on the smaller track since the Big East meet next week will also be run on a 200-meter flat track."Despite the low number of performers, the Irish were not short on solid performances. Trevor McClain-Duer won the 600-meters in 1 minute, 20.79 seconds. Dwight Ellick, perhaps better known for his exploits in the Irish football team's secondary, won the 60-meter dash in a time of 6.81 seconds, with teammate and fellow football player Terrail Lambert finishing in second place at 6.84 seconds. Ellick's time is the best for any Big East runner this season.Selim Nurudeen and Geoff Bennett provided a similar 1-2 punch in the 60-meter hurdles. Nurudeen won the race in 7.96 seconds, with Bennett finishing in 8.24 seconds. With his Big East qualifying time, Nurudeen will now look to win the Big East 60-meter hurdles championship for the second year in a row. Last year, Nurudeen ran a time of 7.78 seconds to claim the title."We had some pretty good performances up there on the smaller track, and that's encouraging," Connelly said.Next weekend, Notre Dame will travel to Syracuse, N.Y. for the Big East Indoor Championships, the meet for which they have spent much of the indoor season preparing. The Irish will look to improve last year's performance, when they barely lost to Connecticut 160-153.
