The Legion National Youth Track and Field Championships took place for the 44th time in August after a two-year, pandemic-imposed hiatus.

Six-hundred-and-ninety teenaged athletes participated over three days of events, including 255 Royal Canadian Legion-sponsored participants who more than held their own against elite club and independent competition from across the country. Among 52 clubs and unattached athletes, RCL teams swept the Top 3 positions in the medal count and placed five in the Top 10.

With Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador not participating for another year due to COVID-related issues, British Columbia/Yukon led all comers with 20 gold and 43 medals overall, followed by Alberta-Northwest Territories (16/36) and Quebec (8/26). Manitoba/Northwest Ontario placed fifth in the team count with 10 medals; Nova Scotia/Nunavut was eighth with eight, half of them gold.

Legion-sponsored teams took 129 of 248 medals awarded at the championships, the only truly national competition for pre-university track-and-field athletes in the country.

Eleven event records were set. Aidan Turner of BC/Yukon broke four on the way to winning silver in the under-18 men’s decathlon, running 11.02 seconds in the 100 metres, leaping 7.04 metres in the long jump, clearing 4.2 metres in the pole vault and throwing 41.34 metres in discus. Both he and gold medalist Samuel Jeffrey from Athletics Niagara surpassed the event’s points record, with Jeffrey coming out on top amassing 6,519, just seven shy of the national mark.

Jake McEacheran of Alberta-NWT won gold in both shot put and discus, earning him the Jack Stenhouse Award as the top male Legion athlete of the competition.

Sofia Agudelo of Quebec earned the Leroy Washburn Award as the top female Legion athlete at the championships after taking golds in the under-16 women’s 80m hurdles, 200m hurdles and the 4x100m relay.

And Kelly Smith, a longtime supporter of Legion athletics, was presented with the President’s Award for his decades of service to the cause.

Each year, the championships commemorate an event in Canadian military history. This year it was the Dieppe Raid.

The event traces its roots to post-First World War efforts by Legion-affiliated veteran/coaches to mentor the sons and daughters of war dead in athletics.

The Royal Canadian Legion began a formal Olympic track-and-field training program in 1957, started producing technical manuals in 1963 and organized its first Canada-wide track-and-field meet in 1975. The National Youth Track and Field Championships have come to represent the RCL’s single largest monetary investment.

Each year, the championships commemorate an event in Canadian military history. This year, it was the disastrous 1942 raid on Dieppe, France. Legion-sponsored athletes stay an extra day, during which they attend educational sessions and take tours.

The championships and accompanying programs are the RCL’s most diverse effort, attracting a cross-section of young, up-and-coming athletes and exposing them not only to the Legion, its good works and Canada’s military past, but to each other.

It also represents an opportunity for young people to commit themselves to goals, to work, to dream, and to test themselves against the best. The benefits are boundless, regardless of their ultimate levels of success.

“It’s a good program for the athletes, but it’s also a good program for the Legion,” said Sandrine Charron, a Sherbrooke-area health co-ordinator who served as chair of the local organizing committee. She mustered some 200 volunteers and helped raise $60,000 in supporting cash, goods and services during the past year.

She said many local athletes had no idea what the Legion was or did until they got involved in its athletics development program. “Now they know what the Legion is and they can tell their friends and everyone.”

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