Northerners showed up in droves for the inaugural RBC Training Ground event at the Thompson Regional Community Centre throughout the morning of April 27.
RBC Training Ground co-ordinator Cole Vincent said 47 athletes from Thompson, Gillam and Nelson House registered to have their overall fitness levels tested in a variety of exercises, exceeding the number who signed up for the same event in Winnipeg the previous week.
“I think today was fantastic,” Vincent said on Saturday. “It might even be the biggest story of Training Ground in Manitoba this year, is the success of bringing it to Thompson.”
In a previous interview, Vincent said his team pushed to bring this four-year old talent identification program to the north after their 2018 event in Winnipeg attracted athletes from communities like Cross Lake and Flin Flon.
On Saturday in Thompson, every participant was given the chance to showcase their speed, stamina and strength using four different tests: 30-metre sprints, vertical jumps, isometric mid-thigh pulls and shuttle runs (also know as the beep test).
“Coming into this one I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the kids, but it’s been really great,” said Olympic curler Jill Officer, who was on hand to provide the athletes with encouragement and support. “They are very excited and enthusiastic and maybe even a little more so here, because a lot of the kids realize how much of a great opportunity this is.”
While the results of this regional qualifier haven’t been made public as of this date, Vincent said any participant could go on to compete in future RBC Training Ground events.
“National sports organizations are going to look over the test scores today and they’ll select the athletes they’re interested in and invite them to sports-specific testing basically over the spring and summer,” he said. “And then after that, the third phase is they can get invited to come out to Calgary for a big final event at the new Genesis Centre out there Sept. 14-15.”
Based on the results of the national final, up to 30 high performing athletes will be selected as RBC Future Olympians and receive funding and resources to potentially compete in the Olympics.
For northern athletes who didn’t make the grade this time around, Officer said this qualifying event in Thompson is a good place for them to start, especially if they are interested developing skills for more specialized sports like rowing.
“What I’ve been telling the kids is to make sure they hang on to their tests, because all of these areas are trainable,” she said. “I think at their age, especially if they’re coming into an event like this, it’s important to be open about the idea of doing or trying out other sports.”
These athletes will probably get the chance to show how much they’ve improved this same time next year, since Vincent said he will definitely be bringing RBC Training Ground back to Thompson as long as he’s still involved with the program in 2020.
“This is definitely a worthwhile trip for us to make,” he said. “I’m really happy we came and I think it’ll only get bigger as we keep coming up here.”
Results of the event in Thompson will be posted at www.cbc.ca/olympics/trainingground sometime this week.
