(L-R) Ronald Hewer, High Performance Speed and Hurdle Coach for Alberta Speed School track club, Katie Pasutto, Kevin Edmondson, Jeremiah Lauzon. (Supplied)

By Alessia Proietti

Hope to make World Athletics Championshi

Three local athletes head to Canadian Track & Field Championship this week in B.C.

Jul 27, 2023 | 12:14 PM

Three Red Deer athletes headed to British Columbia yesterday to compete in the Canadian Track & Field Championship.

From July 27-30, athletes from across the country will be competing at the McLeod Athletics Park in Langley for the categories of Senior, U20, Para Athletics and Combined Events, serving as trials for the World Athletics Championships held in Hungary this August.

Ronald Hewer, High Performance Speed and Hurdle Coach for Alberta Speed School track club in Red Deer, says he has been coaching the three local athletes for the past few years. He adds they have trained between four to six days a week over the past three months specifically for this event.

“There’s no adjective for it. I’m extremely honoured, I’m extremely proud of them as individuals. It doesn’t really matter what competition it is, I’m always going to be proud of them but this competition being the holy grail of track and field in Canada, it’s difficult to get there and it’s difficult to perform while you’re there because there’s so much stress involved with the high level of competition,” he said.

Hewer described each athlete as having their own specific strength.

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The first athlete to compete is Jeremiah Lauzon. A graduate of Lindsay Thurber High School and currently studying Digital Media Communications at West Texas A&M University, he will be representing the track club in the 100 metre and 200 metre races.

According to Athletics Canada, he is ranked sixth in the 200m, behind various Olympic medalists.

“When most people are decelerating at about the 150m mark in the 200m race, he’s still accelerating and he’s just a dream to watch because you see everyone slowing down and he’s still going,” he said.

Kevin Edmondson, a Red Deer Polytechnic student in Kinesiology and graduate of Hunting Hills High school, is also competing in the 100m and 200m seniors category.

Hewer says Edmonson has a strong start in the 100m race with defined mechanics.

Katie Pasutto is the third local athlete to compete this week in the 100m U20 category, focusing on hurdles.

Attending Penhold Crossing High School, Pasutto broke a 47-year-old Alberta Schools’ Athletic Association Central Zone record this year with a time of 12.08 in the 80m hurdle.

Hewer says she has become a “fine hurdle mechanic specialist”. While not blazing in speed, he says she dusted and refined her mechanics to allow her to run a race with effective times.

“When you watch her run, she’s beautiful. It’s poetry in motion,” he said.

Having coached for over 30 years, Hewer says the reward for the athletes is incomparable.

“In our sport, there’s no team; it’s me and my lane,” he said. “You compete, in a way against yourself, primarily that allows you to compete effectively against the competition.”

“It’s always me against the clock,” he said, adding that improving even a tenth of a second is drastic, even though it is a blink of an eye to the audience.

“When you win a medal, it’s your medal. All that sweat and pain; it’s yours.”

Hewer added athletes will be hoping to “put their names in stone” through this competition for a spot at the 2024 Paris Summer Olympics.