FRIDAY, MARCH 6, 2015
Julie Hambleton GAZETTE STAFF @uwogazette
Toronto will play host to the 2015 Pan American Games this summer and nine Western athletes will be competing for spots at the international competition. The event, which takes place from July 10–26, is a multi-sport competition between the countries of the Americas. The main venue will be in Toronto, though some sports will be taking place at various venues across Southern Ontario including St. Catharines, Mississauga, Hamilton and Markham. What many students may not know about the games is that we have nine Pan Am hopefuls right here at Western: Caroline Ehrhardt in triple jump and Robin Bone in pole vault. Gamal Assaad, Robert Wise and Peter Serles in swimming; and Steven Takahashi, Riley Otto, Madi Parks and Larissa D’Alleva in wrestling. For Robin Bone, who is currently the top pole vaulter in the CIS and has recently posted the highest jump in CIS history, adversity came from the very beginning. Having competed in gymnastics from an early age, she was forced into retirement in grade nine due to several severe concussions. Not knowing what to do with herself, Bone tried out for the track team. She was almost immediately recruited by the coach to try pole vault. “At that time I had no idea what pole vault was. He explained it to me, saying I was basically going to be flying through the air and that
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made me really interested,” Bone said. Unfortunately, her doctor told her that if she was going to participate in pole vault, she had to wear a helmet, which Bone found embarrassing — especially in those early days before she had gotten the hang of the sport. “I wasn’t good, I was jumping maybe five feet,” Bone recalls. Despite coming in last at every meet, Bone kept trying. A few meets into the season, just as she began to question whether or not she wanted to keep going, she overheard one of the best girls in the state laughing with her friends at “the girl in the helmet.” That was enough to light a fire inside Bone that has never burned out. “I’m a bit of an ‘I’ll show you’ kind of person, and I remember thinking ‘Oh, you’re making fun of the helmet girl? Well I’ll show you Robin Bone.’ ” Pole vault is a tough sport because though there aren’t really any limits on it; you can always push yourself to do more, and each competition you end on a miss, whether you win or not. “It’s tough coming off the mat thinking if I had given this much more, or that much more, but I think that as an athlete, as hard as that is sometimes to swallow, I think that’s what keeps me in it.” Another Western athlete who had a similarly rocky start is swimmer and engineering student Peter Serles, who is proof that not every great athlete is a star right off the bat. Serles remembers how he failed Aqua Plus 4 four times when he was just four years old. “I couldn’t even swim the length
of the pool,” Serles laughs. Though he did not show an early aptitude for swimming, his mom put him in competitive swimming. This proved to be a good decision, as Serles is now the Western team captain, 2013 National bronze medalist and finalist at the Commonwealth and Pan Pacific Championship trials. The first couple of years were tough, but he eventually grew to love the sport and is thankful that he kept going, even when he didn’t want to. “I eventually developed a good love for the sport and it’s what brought me here and I’m really happy about it,” Serles said. In the beginning, what kept him in the pool was the adrenaline rush of each race. Now, however, he enjoys practice and being able to track his improvement from meet to meet, season to season. “Training is a direct output for how much better you get, and you have your own goals, which drove me to be better every time,” he said. For Serles, his goal is to compete on a national team, and he is excited to be in a position where his dream can become reality. Along with Pan Ams, Serles has his sights set on this year’s University Games, as well as the Worlds in 2017. “It’s really exciting and really kind of cool to have my entire 14 years of training to put me into this position where I’m competing for a spot,” he says. In contrast, wrestling came naturally to Steven Takahashi. His father is Ray Takahashi, Western Wrestling coach and three-time Olympian. While Steven participated in many other sports throughout his elementary and high school years, he spent
a large amount of his time around the wrestling room. “I just fell into place,” Takahashi said. “[I] ended up getting good at it and sticking with it.” Making it to the Olympics is the main driving force for Takahashi each day in practice and in competition. He knows that he is close to achieving that goal, and knows what kind of work he has to do to get there. “I’ve always wanted to make it to the Olympics, to one-up my dad and medal. He came fourth at the Olympics and I’ve always wanted to medal as a kid, and that has always been my dream, always my aspiration, so that’s a big motivation for me.” Takahashi competed at the last Pan Am Games in Guadalarjara, Mexico where he won the bronze medal, and he is going into this summer’s games looking to strike gold. Larissa D’Alleva, a sixth-year Brescia student and 2014 National team member, began wrestling in high school. “[I have] to remind myself that I enjoy it, that and [about my] end goals. You take the small steps and look at the bigger picture as well,” she explains.“It becomes a part of you, it just becomes who you are.” Fourth-year swimmer Robert Wise, three-time Western swimming MVP, five-time OUA gold medalist, CIS bronze, silver, gold medalist and 2011 junior national team member, maintains that mental toughness and reminding yourself that some days will be good and others won’t helps keep things in perspective. “It’s not the end of the world that
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you had a bad race or bad practice, that’s part of the process of becoming a great swimmer is you have to go through ups and downs, take it as a learning process. I think that’s how I’ve always looked at it,” Wise observes. If he is chosen for the Pan-Am team, this will be Wise’s first senior international competition. He says it will be important for him to treat it just like any other meet so as to not sabotage his race with self-inflicted pressure. 2014 Wrestling National Open silver medalist Riley Otto says he is most motivated by his peers, especially his teammates, who help him get through those tough practices and competitions and continue to push him to improve. This is very important in a sport that is as taxing mentally as it is physically. “It’s one-on-one, you against them. There’s not a whole lot of restriction, at any time there’s so many different things you can do,” Otto explains. Madi Parks, who began wrestling as part of an elementary school program and went on to win the bronze medal at the 2014 National Open, agrees that wrestling is a tough sport. You have to work hard, but the harder you work, the more you will achieve. “You feel really good when you win because you know that it’s all you, all your hard work, all your training,” she said. >> see PAN AM pg.8 Top photos, left to right Madi Parks Robert Wise Larissa D’Alleva