HSB25: Rideau Canoe Club’s Julia Price combines paddles & prom in packed weekend

By Simona Milutinovic & Adam Beauchemin

Julia Price got to know all the turns, detours and potholes on Highway 417 and Autoroute 40 very well this past weekend, with a double round trip between Ottawa and Montreal between June 27-29.

The 18-year-old Rideau Canoe Club paddler was competing at the national team trials from Friday to Sunday at the Olympic basin on Île Notre-Dame. But her two worlds were colliding, as she put it, since her high school prom was on Saturday night back in Ottawa.

In the end, Price paddled her second heat of the day to finish sixth in her semi-final of the under-18 women’s C-1 500 metres just before 3 p.m. Saturday and then ducked out of the ‘B’ final to make it to her milestone life event.

“I was really sad that I was maybe going to miss prom, but I’m glad I was able to do both,” recounts the John McCrae Secondary School grad.

By Sunday morning at 9:15 a.m., Price was back on the water for a fifth-place performance in the final of the C-2 women’s 500 m with Abbie Haines, who was also third in the C-1 women’s 200 m. Price placed third in the ‘B’ final of Friday’s 200 m, while Carleton Place’s Isabel Lowry won both the U18 women’s C-1 200 m and 500 m. But Price’s objectives weren’t particularly results-oriented.

“A few disappointments, but at the end of the day I’m pretty happy with how I just showed up as an athlete and performed to the best of my ability,” she reflects. “I went into the competition with kind of a different perspective than I have in previous years. I had a big goal of putting out some races that I would feel I was really proud of and put out a good effort.”

Price has gained many different experiences and perspectives in the sport she took up around age 10.

She’s been all the way to the very top in her group as a member of Team Canada. At the Olympic Hopes Regatta, Price left with C-1 women’s 200 m gold medals in both 2022 (U15) and 2023 (U16), and she earned another gold in the C-4 women’s 200 m in 2023 alongside Haines, Lowry and Rideau teammate Ruby Muhl.

The achievement Price takes most pride in was her C-4 women’s 500 m race at the 2023 U18 world championships in Italy. The crew of Price, Muhl, Abby Wojtyk and Elizabeth Desrosiers-Mcarthur set the fastest junior time ever recorded in that event.

“She’s one of very few athletes in Canada who have set a junior world record,” highlights Rideau Canoe Club high-performance and U18 lead coach Niklas Hansen. “She beat the record before that by a second and a half, which is quite a margin.”

In 2024, Price experienced a letdown when she did not qualify for Team Canada. As the field of competition has become tighter, she says she’s adjusted her mindset.

“It’s definitely been hard. I was facing that disappointment because it was the goal of mine to achieve that again,” she indicates. “But it’s taught me that you need to enjoy the sport for more than just the results that come from it.”

At this year’s national team trials, Price again fell short of hitting the standard required to make Team Canada, although her goal had been “to go out there and race as hard as I could, and I had some really good races that I was actually able to come away from pretty proud of,” she notes.

Price has been listed as a Team Ontario alternate for the 2025 Canada Summer Games, so she’s awaiting word on whether a trip to St. John’s, Newfoundland will be part of her August plans.

As always, she’ll be finishing the summer with a trip to the national championships, where she’ll spend a week in Regina competing alongside her teammates.

Hansen says that Price has been a vital and uplifting force in the Rideau Canoe Club community.

“She not only mastered her own journey, but she’s honestly an invaluable asset to all of her teammates and us as a program,” he explains, noting that Price always has a positive attitude and kind words to say about her teammates – from early dawn to late afternoons after tiring full days at regattas.

“She’s always cheering them on no matter what the challenges are,” Hansen adds. “And she’s really a big part of the social group at the canoe club, not only with the people she trains with everyday, but also people across other programs.”

For Price, the Rideau Canoe Club has become a second home.

“As cheesy as it sounds, I spend so much time there and so the people there that I’ve been around for years and years have really become family,” she underlines. “I think that is what has really kept me in the sport throughout the hard times.”

The path ahead promises not to get any easier for Price when she moves into the senior age group next season (although opportunities at the U23 level could be available).

She’ll be racing against the likes of Paris 2024 Olympic sixth-place finisher Sophia Jensen of Chelsea, QC and Olympic champion Katie Vincent, who just set the fastest time ever in the women’s C-1 500 m at national team trials.

Hansen notes that being successful in the first year at the senior level is very rare for canoeists, however, with persistent training and the constant build up of abilities, success becomes more attainable. He’s watched the hard work Price has pumped into canoeing, which he feels feeds her love of the sport.

“Julia loves to master her skills, so I really think that she sees canoeing as a way where she can really live that out and really try to get better at something,” he outlines.

Price’s plans for the fall include prioritizing her other world as she begins her studies at the University of Ottawa.

“My plan is to take a step back from paddling for the fall time and really lean into the university life and just enjoy it,” signals Price, who will study human kinetics. “I’ve always really enjoyed the science subjects, so biology and chemistry have always been where I found my interest, and with sports, I found that human kinetics was a great combination of the two.”

Read More of our 2025 High School Best Series as we tip our caps to top local student-athletes at: OttawaSportsPages.ca/Ottawa-High-School-Best-2025

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