Armstrong high jumper Trinity Hansma made the most of her Canada Summer Games appearance this week.
Competing in St. Catherines just outside of Niagara, Ont. on Wednesday (Aug. 17), the 21-year-old graduate from Pleasant Valley Secondary School earned a bronze medal with a new outdoor personal-best jump of 1.74 meters — a jump that also matched her indoor personal best.
“The whole experience is super amazing. (The organizers) do such a good job and the coaches and the support staff are truly the best people,” Hansma told The Morning Star.
“It was a really good competition for me so I was supper happy,” she said of her performance.
Her second appearance at the Summer Games was a long time coming. She first represented BC at the Games back when she was 16 years old.
Since then she’s graduated from the University of British Columbia Okanagan with a degree in Kinesiology, and now balances training three to four times a week with a job at a physiotherapy clinic.
She’s a member of the Vernon AAA Track and Field club where she is coached by Ian Cameron.
“He’s truly the best coach I could ask for, he’s very supportive in every way and he does everything he can to make it easy for me to train,” she said of Cameron, who has coached her since she was 13.
Whereas other athletes like to get “hyped” before a high jump competition, Hansma takes a different approach.
“I just try to relax, which is kind of the opposite of what a lot of people do,” she said. “I like to just be chilled out and calm.”
With her performance in the books, the calm and cool Hansma can now kick back and cheer on her teammates at the games.
“It can be hard to balance trying to support your team while also taking care of your mental ability to compete as well as your physical ability to compete, so it’s really nice that I got it done and now I get to be just the biggest cheerleader .”
The 2022 Canada Summer Games in Niagara began on Aug. 6 and will conclude on Sunday, Aug. 21.
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Brendan Shykora
North Okanagan Regional DistrictSportsTrack and field
