Six local high school track and field athletes excelled at the provincial meet held earlier this month in Moose Jaw as evidenced by the medals now glistening in front of their chests.
Craik School’s Charly Nolting, Hanley School’s Kaycee Schroeder, Jade Peters and Courtney Orsen and Loreburn Central School’s Shane Lafontaine and Maddy Vollmer all won a medal or two or three in their respective sports. In total the six athletes brought home 10 gold, silver or bronze medallions from the provincial track and field championships held June 6 and 7 at Gutheridge Field in Moose Jaw.
“I think it’s great that we get the opportunity to compete against all those different athletes that are at that level,” said Courtney Orsen, 18, who won a bronze in the pole vault event. “In my competition there were four of us who jumped the exact same height and it came down to who missed one jump before that to say who got the medal. It was a very close competition (in) the senior girls category.”
Hanley Saber Kaycee Schroeder, 15, who won a silver medal in both the midget girls 1500-metre and 3000-m run, said competing at provincials along with over 1,500 other high school athletes in front of thousands of onlookers was a great experience for her. She said there were people cheering the athletes on and lots of other kids to talk to no matter what event someone was in.
“At first because I was the youngest in the group it was kind of hard to be there racing against older kids, but once I got going I just had to know what I could do and what my limits were,” said Kaycee, noting this was her first time competing at provincials. “It was great racing against all the older kids.”
Hanley’s Jade Peters took the silver medal in the junior girls high jump event as well as a gold in the triple jump event with a leap of 10.92 metres. Loreburn’s Maddy Vollmer finished close behind her at 10.44 metres to win the bronze medal.
Maddy, 16, said the experience of competing at provincials was “awesome” and also pretty tough as every athlete there trained hard during the year for that privilege. She said to get ready for the four events that she qualified in at provincials, three days a week of training at Loreburn Central School was called for along with getting in “as many jumps” as she could during the time leading up to the competition.
Craik Cougar Charly Nolting helped her South Central team win a bronze medal at provincials in the junior girls 4×100-m relay event. Shane Lafontaine also won a relay medal for his West Central team to go along with two more individual awards he took home.
Shane, 14, won gold in the midget boys 4×100-m relay, silver in 100-m hurdles and silver again in the triple jump event. The first-time provincial track and field athlete said winning the medals was not an easy task because of the tough competition, but he made an effort to put in the needed training all year to get to the meet and is happy how things turned out.
“It was really cool to be able to compete with the entire province,” he said. “You feel really good even making it there and then medaling is like maybe I’m one of the top athletes in Canada.”