By Anne Duggan
In a sport where athletes tend to continue improving until age 30, Rideau Canoe Club has many promising young paddlers, including five who are headed to the 2013 Canada Summer Games.
Brendan Fowler, Drew Hodges, Madeline Schmidt, Alexandra Joy and Megan Sibthorpe are all 20 or under, and agree that this fact fuels their training.
“Paddlers peak later,” notes Joy, a Rideau kayaker of 11 years. “Adam (van Koeverden) is over 30. I just know there is so much more potential.”
That was a key fact to keep in mind for Joy this season, her first competing as a senior-level athlete. Making the Canada Games team was her primary focus.
“It is definitely a different experience,” acknowledges the 19-year-old athlete who favours longer distance events. “I am racing against Olympians.”
Fowler, who will be participating in his second Canada Games after representing Alberta at the 2009 event in PEI, also believes that success in their sport requires commitment over the long term.
“I am 20 and you can always evolve because you are not at your maximum at 18,” explains the Carleton University student, who moved from Calgary last May to join the Rideau Canoe Club.
“I want some top performances in all of my events at both the Summer Games and at nationals (Aug. 27-31 in Montreal),” Fowler adds about his goals. “I am just trying to show that I am top in the country, I guess.”
For Schmidt, the objective is to prove herself at the international level as she first takes part in the U23 world championships Aug. 1-4 in Welland, Ont.
Reaching the point where she’s representing Canada in World Cup and championships events has been a long journey, which began when she followed her mother Louise Schmidt into kayaking after watching the Olympics.
“My mom commented how fit the rowers were. I said that I wanted to try it but Mom said I couldn’t row, I had to paddle,” laughs Schmidt, who’s targeting a podium place in the K-1 sprint events at Canada Games.
The 18-year-old has trouble naming her least favourite part of training.
“I love everything, absolutely everything. I guess the one thing I don’t like is that my training slows down school,” adds the Woodroffe student who will be returning for a fifth year of high school.
For Hodges, his introduction to canoeing came five years ago by his babysitter, former Ottawa Sports Awards male athlete of the year Ian Mortimer.
“I had always done team sports like hockey and soccer,” recalls the 19-year-old Carleton student. “Paddling is my first individual sport. You get as much out of it as you put into it.”
Hodges wouldn’t mind bringing home some hardware from Sherbrooke.
“I just want to do the best I can,” says the athlete who recently placed 10th against senior athletes at the national team trials in the C-1 1,000 metres. “But the point of a race is to win.”
That goal became a much more difficult task for Sibthorpe during a recent competition.
“I was paddling really hard at a Lake Placid race recently and my paddle snapped right in the middle of the race,” recounts the 18-year-old with a smile. “People were excited about it.”
Solid focus and a lot of personal-bests are her actual goals for the Canada Games, she adds. Specializing in the shorter canoe categories, Sibthorpe has no problem with motivation when it comes to training, thanks in large part to her peer group of high-performance paddlers at Rideau.
“Everyone is so friendly,” signals the Algonquin College airplane mechanics student. “I love pushing myself and in this sport there is a new challenge every day.”
Manotick’s Natalie Davison of the Carleton Place Canoe Club – a 20-year-old who’s paddled since age 6 and says her goal is to “win gold for Ontario” – will also compete at the Canada Games.