Three Nanaimo teens were winners at national track and field championships.
High jumper Nate Paris, pole vaulter Sonya Urbanowicz and race walker Olivia Lundman all won gold at the Legion Youth Track and Field Championships in Sydney, N.S., this past weekend.
Paris, 15, won gold with a 1.80-metre jump. He faced a challenging field, as five athletes cleared 1.74 metres and three cleared 1.77m.
“Nate mustered all his energy for a beautiful leap,” noted a Nanaimo Track and Field Club press release.
The NDSS student also took a silver medal in the pentathlon and bronze in the 100-metre hurdles. Paris’s pentathlon performance was particularly noteworthy in that he managed second place despite faulting three times on long jump and earning zero points in that discipline. He won the 100m hurdles and high jump – with a new personal best of 1.82m – to help him to his silver-medal finish.
Urbanowicz, also 15, set a national championship record for her division with a 3.30m vault. Her national record and gold medal came a month after the Dover Bay student won gold and set a B.C. record of 3.22m. Urbanowicz also competed in javelin at nationals and finished fourth.
Also winning gold and setting a national record was Lundman, 16. The Dover Bay student led all the way through the race and finished in 14 minutes, 59.08 seconds.
The Nanaimo Track and Field Club’s other national medallist was Keaton Heisterman, 17, who earned silver in style in the 800m race, diving through the finish line in 1:54.23 to stay ahead of a hard-charging third-place competitor.
The track club says the medal haul of three golds, two silvers and a bronze represents “one of the largest medal hauls at the youth national championship in the club’s history.”
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