The Yukon women’s FireFit team didn’t know until the awards banquet that they had won the territory’s only medal.

Megan Coyne, Elizabeth Boyd and Kelsie Olsen’s individual performances on the FireFit course at the Aviation Museum in Ottawa were good enough for third with a combined time of 15 minutes and 2.10 seconds.

The medal is a first for Yukon women at a national FireFit competition.

“It was a bit of a surprise,” said Olsen.

The Yukon was represented by seven members at the national competition. They qualified for the competition at regionals in B.C. earlier in the summer.

Olsen said she felt “shock and excitement” when the Yukon women’s names were called.

The team event uses the top three times of the members from an organization from the individual event.

Coyne had the top time of 3:50.83 and finished 21st in the women’s division. Boyd was next in 23rd with a time of 5:24.47. Olsen was 25th in 5:46.70.

“It was awesome,” said Olsen of the whole competition. “We weren’t quite sure what to expect.”

The competition would turn out to be a bigger version of what they experienced at the regional qualifiers.

Since the team had already qualified for the weekend’s finals, they didn’t have to participate in the wildcard competitions leading up to the main event. But they did anyways, getting more practise in on the course.

On the men’s side, Myron Penner had the top Yukon result, finishing 110th in 1:46.92. Kevin Mendelsohn was 134th in 1:59.24 and Shaun Cooke was 183th in 2:02.47.

The men and women compete on the same course, which uses a number of sections to simulate a fire ground.

Energized after a successful run at nationals, the team is now looking towards planning next year. They gained some valuable training insight from competitors and are looking forward to putting them into practise.

“I’m really happy I went,” said Olsen. “I’m excited for next year.”