HIGH ACHIEVERS: Rugby sevens player ShonDreya Smardon named RBC Training Ground Olympian

By Martin Cleary

Multi-talented athlete ShonDreya Smardon has earned the opportunity of a lifetime.

After a decade of exploring a full range of sports and enjoying every moment, she now finds herself on the threshold of becoming an Olympic athlete for Canada.

A Grade 12 student at John McCrae Secondary School, Smardon, 17, recently learned she was one of the top 30 athletes at the RBC Training Ground national finals in Halifax.

Smardon has elected to follow rugby as her designated athletic career path and will aim to play for the women’s sevens team at future international competitions, including the Summer Olympics, which are slated for 2028 in Los Angeles and 2032 in Brisbane, Australia.

A member of the Barrhaven Scottish Rugby Football Club for the past four years and part of the Eastern Ontario Rugby Union and Rugby Ontario junior programs, she will spend the next two years working towards becoming an elite rugby sevens player along an accelerated path to the Olympics, while receiving $7,500 in funding and receiving mentoring from team athletes and coaches.

The funding will be administered by the specific National Sport Organization, Rugby Canada, and will be used for coaching, transportation, travel, equipment, nutrition, etc.

More than 2,500 athletes aged 14-25 years old participated in 21 qualifying events across Canada during the ninth RBC Training Ground session in 2024. The cross-country talent search was run in partnership with the Canadian Olympic Committee and the regional Canadian Sport Institutes.

One hundred athletes were selected for the national final last month based on their qualifying-round scores in core speed, strength, power and endurance tests. Talent scouts in 13 different Olympic sports watched the athletes to see if they were suitable for their sport.

Anthropomorphic measurements, such as height and wingspan, sport-specific testing and competitive sport history played key roles in determining the top 30 athletes.

Smardon, who participated in a tryout in 2023 but was unsuccessful, couldn’t take the initial phone call from an RBC Training Ground official because she was in a class at John McCrae. She later learned she had been selected an RBC Olympian during a phone call from her mother Shyrissa.

“I was over the moon,” Smardon said in a phone interview this week. “I couldn’t understand it, knowing I was up there against so many athletes at the national level. It’s incredible.

“Being there (at the national final) and seeing all the athletes, who were a lot older, I didn’t expect to make the top 30.”

Smardon is a well-rounded person with many athletic skills and an upbeat personality. She has a history of playing many sports and an 87 per cent average in her high-school classes.

“In terms of athleticism, ShonDreya reminds us of current national team player and Olympic medallist Asia Hogan-Rochester, so we think she has a very high ceiling,” said Clarence Gay, a Rugby Canada strength and conditioning coach.

The national programs for flag football, which will make its Olympic debut at the 2028 Summer Olympics, and rock climbing, which was part of the 2020 Tokyo and 2024 Paris Olympics, also showed interest in developing Smardon as a high-performance athlete.

Since the RBC Training Ground program started in 2016, more than 16,000 athletes have been tested at free tryouts as well as through virtual opportunities. National Sport Organizations have identified more than 3,000 athletes as having Olympic potential.

Twenty-one RBC Training Ground alumni have won a total of 14 medals at three Olympics, including seven at the 2024 Paris Summer Games. Rowers Krissy Scurfield and Avalon Wasteneys were silver medallists in the women’s eight boat in Paris, and track cyclist Kelsey Mitchell earned gold at the 2020 Tokyo Games.

Smardon’s athletic pathway to becoming an RBC Training Ground Olympian featured six different sports as well as strength and conditioning sessions with CanAm for the past four years and speed training classes with C.A.N.I. for two years.

While training at CanAm, a young woman suggested Smardon try rugby with the Barrhaven Scottish. She also trained at CanAm for her two RBC Training Ground testing sessions.

Smardon’s introduction to sports came when she was eight years old with the Nepean-Ottawa Diving Club. She enjoyed the competitions for three years, but said no to the high towers.

She had her first team experience playing in the Ottawa Fusion volleyball program and taking part in tournaments, including the provincial championships.

As a wide receiver and safety, Smardon loved playing tackle football in the Bell Warriors’ mosquito program. But by age 14, she stepped back from making tackles and scoring touchdowns for her safety.

“I enjoyed it. It was great and really competitive,” she recalled. “Playing with the guys was a big step, super aggressive. It was a big family.”

For the past three years, flag football replaced the tackle game. She started with the Warriors’ program, but graduated to the Hawks and was a member of Team Ontario’s age-group program for the past three seasons. She helped the Ontario U18 team win the silver medal at the Canadian championships in Kingston last May, after a bronze in 2023.

She was on the John McCrae track and field team in 2024, helping the Bulldogs to a seventh-place result in the girls’ senior 4×100-metre relay at the Eastern OFSAA regional track and field championships.

At the same time she played flag football and had a short track season, Smardon also was developing her rugby skills.

She was selected by Rugby Canada to attend the 2024 women’s U18 East development camp to experience a high-performance training environment. In 2023, Smardon was part of the Ontario Blues Development Academy.