A handful of young track-and-field athletes from across the Semiahmoo Peninsula have national championship medals to add to their respective trophy cases.
White Rock’s Rori Denness – a member of the Langley Mustangs club – led the charge up the podium at 2016 Legion National Track and Field Championships, capturing a national title in the midget (U18) girls javelin event.
Alexa Porpaczy and Ryan Denman, both members of South Surrey-based Ocean Athletics, also won gold medals – Porpaczy won the U18 high jump title, while Denman took top spot in the U18 men’s high jump competition.
Denman’s best jump was 1.8 m, which was three centimetres higher than second-place jumper Armand Malumalu.
Denness – who also won gold at BC Summer Games last month in Abbotsford – won her event with relative ease, as her best throw of 40.29 m was more than two metres better than silver medallist Jenna Reid’s toss of 38.23-m.
A third member of Ocean Athletics, Olivia van Ryswyk won a bronze medal in the pole vault – setting a new personal-best mark with a score of 2.8 m.
The Legion national championships were held earlier this month in St. Therese, Que., a suburb of Montreal.
“Legions was a huge success… with lots of great memories,” Denman wrote in an email to his Ocean Athletics coach Maureen de St. Croix, who shared the note with Peace Arch News.
“It was quite an experience… one that I will never forget.”