A golden debut on the provincial stage highlighted a strong Okotoks showing.
Foothills Falcons Grade 10 student Jaxson McCance soared to a gold medal in the 100m hurdles in a 14.39 seconds finish to climb to the top of the podium at the Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association Provincial Track and Field Championships at Calgary’s Foothills Athletic Park.
“I was ecstatic, really happy to win,” he said. “I feel like it’s a great accomplishment and I feel like I can work more to better myself and get faster and move myself forward with hurdles.”
McCance took off .64 of a second from preliminaries to the final on the same day with a technical adjustment paying dividends just a few hours later.
“My parents took a video of me running and I noticed I was jumping really high,” McCance said. “So I thought, I’ve got to jump lower so I can go faster.
“It was close, I had to really lurch myself forward to win it.”
McCance said he was nervous on the starting line at his first crack at provincials, adding his experience in hurdles is limited and his form could be better.
The high school junior was introduced to the running event at Okotoks Junior High through its track program.
“I just liked doing it because I won a lot,” he said.
The Heuver brothers cleaned up once again at provincials.
Noah Heuver, a Grade 11 student, medalled in the 3,000m event for the second year in a row, winning bronze, along with a bronze medal in the 1,500m. Nathan Heuver, a senior, struck for bronze in the 300m hurdles.
The brothers teamed up with Daniel Hauser and Carver Morris, an Oilfields student, for a fifth-place result in 4x400m open relay.
As a team, Foothills finished 13th with 103 points at the championships.
Quincy Jenkins, a star with the Okotoks Dawgs Academy, finished sixth in the 100m and eighth in the 200m while multi-sport athlete Ella Simard earned top-10 finishes in the high jump and shot put and Nash Byam was 10th in the 3,000m.
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights produced 62 points, good for 24th place, with an across-the-board effort from its 25 athletes highlighted by a dozen top-10 finishes in individual events and four more in relays.
The 4x100m junior girls relay team of Mya Jansen, Grace Christie, Julianna Brown and Ciara Moynihan, along with Aniston Saboe, earned silver in 51.72 seconds.
Grade 12 Kira Bartos won bronze in the javelin with Grade 10 Milo Evans snaring bronze in the 3,000m.
Dallas Tanaka sprinted to fourth in the 100m, Sydney David skipped to fourth in the triple jump, Eva Gustafson was fifth in the 400m with Brown, Moynihan, Jaelyn Wood, Madison Maksymich and Cadence Slaney, in the pentathlon, adding top 10 finishes.
Morris, a Grade 11 student and the Oilfields Drillers’ lone provincial representative, had a banner meet with a silver medal in the 800m in 1:58.27 along with a fourth in the 400m.
The Strathcona-Tweedsmuir School Spartans had 16 points as a team with the McGillivray sisters, Maia and Meghan, Lucy Govender and Noah Bishop producing top-10 results.
Meghan, a junior, was fourth in the 200m and fifth in the 400m while Maia, a senior, was eighth in the 200m. Govender was fifth in the 3,00m and Bishop moved to fifth in the 800m.
For more information, visit the ASAA website.
