Kingston’s Aaliyah Edwards’ impressive development as a basketball player has given the 19-year-old an opportunity to compete for her country at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

 

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Edwards is a six-foot-three forward and was the youngest player on the senior women’s Team Canada in 2019. She was selected as the team’s top performer in the 2019 gold medal AmeriCup Game that was played in San Juan, Puerto Rico and featured the top 10 teams in North, Central and South America.

After leading her Crestwood high school team to an undefeated season, Edwards is now a sophomore at the University of Connecticut and a Huskies Forward. In 2019, she was the first Kingston women’s basketball player on Canada’s senior team since Andrea Blackwell, who was a member from 1979 to 1996. Blackwell competed for Canada in the 1984 and 1996 Olympics and played in four world championships.

 

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Edwards has been meeting achievement after achievement, including being named the Big East Sixth Woman of the Year in 2021. Her invitation to the Canada national team’s training camp in preparation for the 2021 FIBA Women’s AmeriCup marked her fifth time being named to Team Canada. After the AmeriCup took place in June 2021 in Puerto Rico, Aaliyah Edwards officially became the ninth former Huskie set to compete in women’s basketball events in Tokyo this year. On average, Edwards contributed 4.7 points and 4.5 rebounds per game at the AmeriCup. She also revealed how her skill set has improved since her freshman year at UConn, demonstrating versatility that will make her a valuable teammate at the Games.

“Every time I step on the court, whether practice or game day, is all about expanding my knowledge,” she said. “There is always something to learn and I’m all about that. Student of the game for life.”

 

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While she misses her teammates and coaches at UConn, they had hoped her return would be delayed even further by the opportunity to compete at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. Fortunately, the Huskies will have to wait a bit longer for their reunion with Edwards as she prepares to compete on the world stage. In 2019, she reflected on how the Limestone City continues to support her as a force to be reckoned with on Team Canada:

“I’ve actually received a lot of love from my past teammates and coaches in Kingston since it was announced that I was selected for the team,” Edwards said. “I’m locked into the task at hand but really appreciate the love coming from my hometown.”

Story adapted from a profile by Ian MacAlpine

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This story was originally published by Steph Crosier in the Kingston Whig-Standard.

To say Annie Foreman-Mackey’s journey to the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic Games has been unpredictable, busy and filled with mixed emotions would be an understatement, but she couldn’t be more excited.

“It’s exciting, especially after the craziness of the past year and a bit,” team pursuit cyclist Foreman-Mackey said from Milton where she and her teammate are training at the Mattamy National Cycling Centre. “It actually feels a bit surreal that it is all going ahead … It’s just a huge honour and it’s something you dream might be possible, but it’s another to actually become reality.”

She plans for the races in Tokyo to be her last as a competitive athlete as she continues her next challenge: medical school at the University of British Columbia. Originally the plan was to start med school after her retirement, but because of the pandemic, she’s has had to balance her first year as a student and Olympic-level training.

“Definitely not how I imagined the year before the Olympics to look like,” Foreman-Mackey said.

Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute graduate admitted the balance hasn’t always come easy, especially becoming a student again after a seven-year hiatus, but she managed to get creative squeezing in her training and focusing it on quality or quantity. On the plus side, Foreman-Mackey likes having a busy schedule and she even found time to work at a COVID-19 vaccination clinic.

“You have to really listen to your body,” Foreman-Mackey reflected. “In terms of athletic training, you’re always sort of trying to find that line of digging yourself into a hole, because you have to train really hard and you’re kind of flirting burn out, and then you take recovery and build back. That’s how you get stronger.

Unable to waver in her studies or training, Foreman-Mackey said had to really watch that line and listen to her body. This sometimes meant taking extra rest days in order to recover adequately. While her coaches and teammates were always available, taking responsibility for training on her own in Vancouver took a lot of trust from them.

“I think we did a good job, but it is asking a lot from your team to believe in you and to trust you,” Foreman-Mackey said. “I think we were able to do that because we had spent so much time together historically as a team and so our technical skills were there. It was just using the time away to build your engine.”

Foreman-Mackey found her love for cycling at a young age after watching fellow Kingstonian Simon Whitfield win triathlon gold at the 2000 Sydney Summer Olympics. She said she soon started competing in the Kingston Kids’ Triathlon and other triathlons as she grew older. While she trained for all three elements, she excelled at swimming especially and joined the Kingston Blue Marlins swim team. She then competed at the varsity level with McMaster University.

As she completed her degree in Health Sciences Foreman-Mackey returned back to cycling and participated in some road and mountain biking races as well as the KTown Tri. In 2014, she was invited to Los Angeles for a trial to join the team and was successful. She said the transition from swimming to cycling was smooth because she is highly motivated by having teammates. Foreman-Mackey described her McMaster swim team as a family.

“I think the team aspect of team pursuit is the reason why I’m still very committed to the sport,” Foreman-Mackey said. “I’m motivated going to the start line with other people knowing that what you are doing is contributing to something bigger than yourself.”

In addition to competing around the world with the team, Foreman-Mackey was an alternate at the 2016 Rio Summer Olympics. The team didn’t need her to compete, but she said it gave her a solid dry run on what to expect.

As Foreman-Mackey continued to train with the team, she earned a master’s degree in public health from the University of Toronto. Because of all she had learned, going to the Olympics during a global pandemic brought on some mixed emotions. There was even a time when she felt like it wasn’t right to go. It caused a lot of personal conflict.

“It’s just these two very different worlds where the athletic world had to keep pushing along like everything was going ahead, because you have to have that singular focus to keep your motivation through the hard days,” Foreman-Mackey recalled.

“Then on the other side, I have a background in public health and I’m integrating into the medical community slowly, and seeing the devastation that COVID has brought to this other world … in some ways, it felt like living a contradiction that I felt quite challenged by and it’s something I continue to reckon with it. There’s no black and white at this moment and it’s just a lot of complexities.”

The Tokyo Olympics officially start July 23 with the opening ceremonies and conclude on August 8. Foreman-Mackey and her team are scheduled to compete on Aug. 2 at 2:50 a.m. local time, on Aug. 3 at 2:30 a.m., and, if they make it to the finals, again at 4 a.m.

The games are being streamed in Canada by CBC.

Foreman-Mackey and her team leave for Japan on July 24 and she is most looking forward to getting on the Izu Velodrome track to take on the best in the world. It has been nearly a year and a half since and her team raced the 4000 m and despite the results, she’ll be finishing her career at the top of her game.

“It feels pretty meaningful as a closing out of a career that has been a wild journey,” Foreman-Mackey said. “We’ve been working really hard behind the scenes and to be able to perform in front of the whole world is a pretty wild experience.”

scrosier@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/StephattheWhig

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Although Kristina Walker has done most of her competitive rowing for the University of British Columbia Thunderbirds, she grew up on a small farm on Wolfe Island, was a member of the Kingston Rowing Club (KRC), and continues to believe that when Kingston’s waters are smooth, it’s one of the best places she’s ever rowed. Since 2018, she has been a member of the Rowing Canada National Team and has rowed all over the world, making this compliment particularly special. Walker is continuing to perform on the world stage as she rows to the top international sporting event, the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

 

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Walker was first introduced to rowing in her final year of high school at Loyalist Collegiate and Vocational Institute (LCVI). Although the small group of novice rowers only rowed for about a month, the feeling of being on the water lingered with her. At the time, she was involved in cross-country and track, later being recruited to the University of British Columbia (UBC) for those sports. UBC offered a novice rowing program that she signed up for during the first week on campus, and now she’s a full-time rower headed to compete at the Olympic games in the women’s four.

Nearly every summer since her competitive rowing began, Walker has returned to Kingston and the Kingston Rowing Club. She continues to praise Rami Maassarani, the head coach from Queen’s, who played a significant role in her professional career and truly cultivated her enjoyment of the sport. Four months out of the year, Walker would row Kingston waters and train for the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta. She trained in a pair with her partner, Jenna Adams, under Maassarani for two summers. The pair would row at least every day, sometimes twice, on Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. Today, Kristina Walker tells us she is still passionate about the unique rowing experience Kingston offers.

 

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“It’s kind of a cool contrast because you can get some great rowing spots in Kingston but then it’s also one of the best places for sailing too. That’s kind of a contrast since [rowers] like flat water and [sailors] like wavey water, and wind. Sometimes in the summer it can blow up in the middle of the day but that’s why we go out at 5 am. There were a lot of mornings where, if the water was super flat, we would go out to Lake Ontario and just go for a super long row along some of the Thousand Islands. It’s gorgeous. When the water is actually flat, it’s one of the best places to row that I’ve ever rowed.”

Clearly, despite Kingston’s epic sailing legacy, rowers also find Kingston waters cater to their sport. Walker recognizes that Kingston has a rich history of producing excellent rowing talent.

“Even for this Olympics, three of us [rowers] are from Kingston and then another additional one went to Queen’s. I think a lot of that has to do with a team culture and organizational culture. A big part of that at Queen’s and at Kingston is that I think they have a vision of excellence and always want the rowers to be their best selves. It doesn’t matter if you’re a novice or an expert.”

 

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She recalls summers in Kingston when highly experienced rowers sat in the same boat with her when she had only just learned to row. Everyone was seen as equal in the local rowing community, meaning those at higher levels could teach beginners, and even professionals could grow by working closely with novice rowers.

While the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the idea of community all over the globe, Walker turned to routines and behaviours to stay disciplined and prepare for Tokyo 2020. She found it helpful to focus on goals, but also to simply love the process. Throughout the pandemic, learning to love the journey and appreciate each moment has been critical.

“That’s been a big part of this year, just enjoying rowing and knowing that it’s a privilege and an honour, especially in times where other people aren’t able to pursue sport or pursue their love or their passion in something. We have the opportunity as Canadian rowers to go and do that. I think it’s really important to realize how grateful we are for that. There’s no better feeling than sitting in a boat and making it go fast. That’s a big motivator for me, too.”

 

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Walker has been busy with more than just training over the last year. In 2021, she launched a podcast interviewing people who have achieved success in their profession or sport. The idea stemmed from a conversation she had with one of her teammates. Walker was explaining her love for podcasts but also her frustration that when listening to them, she often had questions of her own that she wished the podcast host would ask. She wanted to be in control of those kinds of passionate conversations.

“I was also thinking about how I’m so lucky to have been around such amazing people the past few years – and my whole life – and how cool would it be to share some of their insights and their knowledge and also give me some wisdom too, especially going into the Games this summer…The next day I went out and bought the equipment because I was like, ‘I don’t want to second guess this, I’m just gonna go do it.’…[The guests] have all been so inspirational, and a lot of wisdom has been shed on me which, if nobody listens to them then that’s okay because at least I learned something.”

 

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The podcast has featured the success stories of 13 guests so far, including multiple Olympic medallists Tessa Virtue and Rhian Wilkinson. And while Kristina Walker may be too humble to admit it, she’s already her own success story. With numerous accolades rowing for the UBC Thunderbirds and winning silver for Canada in the double sculls in Shanghai, she has earned her place representing Canada at the Games this summer. It seems fitting that she hails from Wolfe Island, a place surrounded by the very waters she loves so much.

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It was only by chance – or perhaps fate – that Abi Tripp took a deep dive into competitive swimming.

Tripp’s introduction to swimming was at the age of five, when she and her older brother were signed for the Kids of Steel Triathlon by their mother. The event took place in 2006, and Tripp didn’t swim at the time. Vicki Keith, a world record-holding marathon swimmer (she swam across all the Great Lakes in 1998) was there as a Kingston celebrity. We spoke with Abi Tripp about how her competitive swimming journey began and continues to thrive as she heads toward the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games.

“I was running around the two little trees at RMC (Royal Military College of Canada) and [Vicki] saw me and was like, ‘That kid needs to be on my team.’ I was wearing my ankle-foot orthotics and probably just walking like a true CP – which stands for cerebral palsy – and then she talked to my mom and the next year I was six years old and old enough to join the team.”

This summer marks Tripp’s second Paralympic Games, but she believes she never would have discovered swimming if that chance encounter at RMC hadn’t taken place, especially since she didn’t like swimming much as a child. In Tokyo, she’ll be competing in the 100-metre breaststroke in the SB7 category, the 50-metre freestyle S8, the 100-metre freestyle and 4×100-metre freestyle relay.

Tripp, who has cerebral palsy and dystonia, looks back on the beginning of her swimming journey with the Kingston Y Penguins and Vicki Keith as her coach. The Y Penguins provides a swimming environment for youth with disabilities and their able-bodied siblings. The welcoming atmosphere made seemingly small tasks – such as walking across a pool deck – an entirely different experience for Tripp as a child.

“It was very much growing up there. I hardly remember my life without the Penguins and I’m so thankful for that. I think it’s hard, having a disability in our world. I think it’s hard to stand out when so much of what we do is to fit in…it can be challenging. I was always wearing my ankle-foot orthotics and I was falling over a lot. My last name is Tripp, and I tripped a lot and that wasn’t very helpful at school. Now I can laugh at that. I think it’s pretty funny but, in the moment, I think that that’s really challenging, and the Y Penguins was a place where I had complete freedom.”

Tripp feels privileged to be able to access this kind of environment in Kingston. It was a steady presence, a constant in her childhood and teenage years. From those starting to learn how to swim to people attending international meets representing Canada, the Y Penguin’s wide range of abilities fueled her dream to compete for Canada.

Now that her goal of qualifying for the Paralympics has been reached – twice – Abi Tripp believes it’s her ambitious nature and dedication to inspiring others that keeps her afloat.

“In general, with athletes, especially Paralympic, Olympic athletes, we’re very goal-oriented people. We all have moments where we’re lacking motivation, but at the same time, there’s not really time to lose motivation. There’s always something we’re working towards and for me, personally, I am an ambitious person, and my goal is to be able to reach my full potential and see how fast I can swim and to work as hard as I can. I know that my platform as a Paralympian is bigger. It gives me a larger voice so I can connect with more people and that’s something that jazzes me up, to be part of something bigger than myself, to help grow awareness for parasports, to get more kids in the sport, to talk about inclusion, to talk about women in sport.”

All these passions help keep Tripp focused on training, along with creativity. She reveals that she sees swimming as an art form, as “a platform on which she can dance.” By combining technical pieces with creativity, she strives to make her swimming look as beautiful and effortless as possible – while going as fast as she can.

“With parasport, with paraswimming, it is absolute creativity because everybody’s body is different. Every body moves differently, everybody has different strengths and weaknesses. For me, my legs are not the strongest thing in the pool: it’s my arms. Breaststroke is a stroke that’s focused on your kick. The kick is the most important part, but for me, I’ve created a stroke that works for me and that does the job. You have to be creative…I think that’s what keeps me feeling young in the sport and excited about it.”

At the Rio 2016 Paralympics, Tripp made the finals in three events and broke Canadian records with her times in the 400 free and 200 IM. As the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics approach, she feels as though it’s all coming full circle. From beginning at the Y Penguins as a non-swimmer, to doing her own coaching there, Abi Tripp has learned that focusing on the joy of swimming – not the medals that may come with it – is key. There’s value in sport, because of the joy it brings, because of the confidence it cultivates, and because it builds community.

“I’m going to be swimming until I can’t swim anymore, so if I can do anything to help at least one other kid with a physical disability or a young girl, if I can help them or shed a little bit of light on the possibilities for them to be a part of sports, I think it’s so worth it. Sport is something that is universal, anybody can do it and it gives somebody a community.” 

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Put simply, sailing has always been a part of Alexandra’s (Ali) ten Hove’s life. As a youth, she raced Optis and 420s, winning multiple national and North American titles and representing Canada at two Youth World Championships. Her own father, Martin ten Hove, competed in sailing at the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles. Now, it’s Ali ten Hove’s turn to compete for Canada at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in sailing in the 49er – Skipper class. The world’s most prestigious sports competition is on the horizon for ten Hove, and she’s reflecting on why growing up in Kingston was critical to her Olympic journey.

Born and raised here, ten Hove spent her childhood watching her father race and participate in regattas. Her parents signed her up to the Kingston Yacht Club (KYC) Junior Sailing program as a child and she fell in love with the sport. After aging out of youth competitions, she transitioned to the 470 and had her first experience running an Olympic campaign from 2013 to 2016. She competed at numerous World Cup events and World Championships, narrowly missing the opportunity to compete at the 2016 Games in Rio. When she became a skipper in the 49er FX class she met her current teammate, Mariah Millen. The ten Hove and Millen team have won numerous national titles and their fourth-place finish at the 2019 Pan American Games in Lima earned them their spot at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic games. We spoke with Ali ten Hove to learn more about how her hometown helped her sail to the Games.

Ten Hove believes Kingston’s physical landscape plays a part in nurturing her sailing skills, but more importantly, it’s the resources and sailing community that contribute to Kingston’s sailing legacy. “I was really lucky to grow up out of the Kingston sailing community and specifically the Kingston Yacht Club because there would be sailors around who were past world champions, Pan Am medallists, past Olympians…and I think Kingston has a really incredible theme of giving back and I try to embody this theme as well. People within Kingston and in the Kingston sailing community really want to pass along their knowledge so I definitely benefitted from that firsthand. It’s definitely a main reason I am where I am today.”

Some other supports in the Kingston community she praises include organizations like Canadian Olympic-training Regatta, Kingston, widely known as CORK. Almost every year of her sailing career, ten Hove has participated in a CORK event. The team works tirelessly to bring high-profile, international events such as the Junior World Championships or the Laser Worlds to Kingston home waters. When she speaks of the organization, it’s with nothing but gratitude and pride.

Speaking of working tirelessly, ten Hove herself believes she’s only able to succeed the way she does because of the people who motivate her.

“What keeps me going is all the people that support me and are behind me and have believed in me and given me unconditional support. In a sporting career it’s not always going to be all ups. There’s some highs and some lows and my support team is so incredible, people who donate financially to me, donate time, just really believe in me, and believe that I would get to the Olympics and would be representing Canada. Just having them in my corner is what keeps me going.”

After a lifetime of support from Kingston, ten Hove is giving back by focusing on improving the low retention rate for young women in the sport of sailing. She credits the skills learned in sport for shaping the person she is today and decided to run a series of workshops and camps called, “Women Sailing to Success.”

“These camps are geared towards exposing young girls and young women to what the world of Olympic sailing looks like, what opportunities are offered, the skills you can learn and it just provides a place for young girls and young women in Canada to network with each other. Sailing is such a niche sport and I think having that community aspect is really important and also having a strong female role model to look up to, to say, ‘Look she did it, I can do that too.’”

Feedback has been more than positive for these workshops, with some young women who attended deciding to pursue Olympic sailing. Ten Hove recently saw some of them at the waterfront trying out their new Olympic-class boat for the first time. Ali ten Hove has been on the national team and competing on the World Cup circuit for eight years so far. While her athletic journey is far from over, she’s also bearing witness to Kingston’s next generation of professional sailors.

“I want to emphasize how thankful I am to the Kingston community for their support over the years. I feel really blessed to come from such a supportive community like Kingston and I’m really excited and proud to represent them on the world stage at the Olympics this summer.”

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Will Crothers is a Kingston household name. He’s been rowing internationally for Canada since 2004. He has claimed two World Championship medals, won silver at the London 2012 Olympics as a member of the men’s eight, bronze at two World Cups as part of the same “True North Four” team, and two gold medals at the 2015 Pan Am Games. The True North Four is continuing to prove that they haven’t come this far just to stop now. With their second-place finish at the final Olympic qualification regatta for Tokyo 2020, the crew has earned their spot at this summer’s Games, and Crothers is in the stroke seat.

Tokyo 2020 will be Crothers’ third time at the Olympic Games, and he continues to remain vocal about how his hometown of Kingston has supported a variety of athletes, including himself. His multi-Olympic journey started at Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute (KCVI). While originally introduced to rowing through his older brother who was a rower in high school as well, some friends whom Crothers rode with needed a fourth man to round out their four. He decided to hop in the boat. Being one of the taller students was an asset, as length and leverage is helpful when rowing. But what started as simply joining his friends down at the Kingston Rowing Club (KRC) became an activity he both enjoyed and excelled at. The four were undefeated in their novice season, “fueling the fire” of Crothers’ competitive personality. We spoke with him about how growing up and learning to row in Kingston has impacted him as a soon-to-be three-time Olympian.

 

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“I was really fortunate to be able to grow up on the water…the community at the Kingston Rowing Club is full of passionate people and the type of people that just knew the path for a high-performance athlete to take and I guess they sort of steered my ship. They steered me in the right direction as far as the next steps and constantly chasing something that was a higher goal than what I was doing that year.”

Crothers, who is also a member of the Kingston Yacht Club (KYC), recognizes Kingston’s powerful sailing legacy. While solid wind isn’t necessarily conducive to rowing, the bodies of water here still nurture Olympic rowers. Crothers teammate Gavin Stone also has ties to Kingston as a Queen’s University graduate and former Queen’s rower, and Tokyo 2020 will be the fourth Olympics in a row in which a Kingston rower has competed.

While he genuinely believes the sense of community in sports runs nation-wide, Crothers emphasizes how his hometown focuses on putting relationships first. His team had a dedicated lead coach, John Armitage, who connected the crew with a novice coach, Nathan Splinter, then a coxswain for the Queen’s men’s eight. The crew was guided by “Master Splinter” before being coached by Armitage himself. When speaking about the Kingston rowing community though, Will Crothers is grateful for more than his coaches.

“The countless volunteers that are hanging around the club, willing to put in the time so that young kids like myself could have a great experience, willing to drive the truck and trailer up and down the 401 to different regattas, St. Catharines, Montreal, all over the place…I was super fortunate to have all these people that would donate their time to us as athletes because without them we wouldn’t have been able to go and see what was happening around the province and compete against those guys and then eventually start rowing with them on the Junior World Championship level. It was huge, having the help of those volunteers and a lot of rowing wisdom was passed around.”

 

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While his professional career took off in Kingston, Crothers says he’s been fortunate enough to experience strong relationships throughout his whole rowing career. That Kingston community-feel follows him all over the country, wherever he’s training or competing. Despite heading to the Olympics for the third time, Crothers is more motivated than ever. After all, he believes that rowing is sort of elusive.

“Rowing is one of those sports where you’re chasing something. It’s like trying to hold fire in your hand, you know. You get too close; it gets really hot and then you have to back off almost. It’s a magical feeling when you’re getting it absolutely right and I’ve only felt that a few times, I think, in my career, where, for a full two thousand metres, you’re actually doing the right thing the entire time. I’m still learning at this point in my career, which is amazing.”

 

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It’s not just the technical elements that continue to inspire him, but the new people he gets to work with and the bonds he forms in the boat with his teammates. With two Olympic Games already in his back pocket, we asked him what’s changed since. His first Olympics in 2012 involved absorbing the knowledge of the leaders he had in the boat that had done well in Beijing in 2008. After his first Games, he continued to take one step forward every day during training, but he had a clearer picture to prepare for his second Games.

“Now, I feel like it’s about execution for me and going out and trying to have the best performance that I possibly can. I think that that’s still out there for me and I happen to believe that it coincides with a gold medal at the Olympics. I’m chasing that feeling of my best performance on the day, once every four years, which is a pretty unique thing to be able to do and I feel very privileged to be able to do that. But it’s also earned, you know, it’s a lot of hard work to do that. But to have the support of all of Canada and all the taxpayers, shouts out for allowing us to do what we do and hopefully bring a nation, a country, and the world together.”

 

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As a Kingston legend and a rowing veteran, Crothers is excited to pass on the lessons he’s gained, even stating that he feels as young as he did when he first started at the National Training Centre.

“I still feel like I’m in the best shape of my life and have so much to give to the sport and it’s just such an honour too to represent Canada and Kingston, such a well-respected country on the world stage. It’s an honour to put the leaf on my blade and wear it on my chest and put everything on the line.”

Will Crothers is rowing towards his third Olympic Games, and we’re holding to the belief that good things come in threes.

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Header photo credit to Kevin Light

Jennifer (Jenny) Casson was completely against rowing – at first. She had always been an athletic, competitive person, but after several stress fractures in high school, she was unable to do what she loved: competitive running. It was her brother, who rowed for Kingston Collegiate and Vocational Institute (KCVI), who suggested she try rowing. Despite the 5 a.m. practices that deterred her for a while, she decided to give the sport a chance in grade 11. Since 2017 she’s been competing on the Canadian Senior National Team and now, she’s headed to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.

We spoke with Casson as she reflected on her very first rowing experience with awe.

“I got into a boat and I was like, ‘This is pretty cool. This is kinda fun.’ And it was so beautiful, with the Kingston sunrise and out on the lake…Honestly, KCVI had a really fun rowing community and rowing environment so that kind of hooked me and I really got along with the coach and my teammates.”

After getting on an ergometer and doing a two kilometre test for rowing, Casson did well enough to catch the attention of some universities. She fell in love with the campus at University of Tulsa and accepted an offer of admission right away, claiming that her angsty teenage self was ready to leave home, especially to someplace as seemingly unexpected like Tulsa, Oklahoma.

 

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But Casson’s rowing journey began here in Kingston. Perhaps it was our freshwater that took her from being the type of high schooler who did every sport just for fun to becoming one of Canada’s best rowers. She claims that being surrounded by three bodies of water in Kingston had a significant impact on her lifestyle.

“You have the Rideau Canal, St. Lawrence, and Lake Ontario and then I also have a cottage on Horseshoe Island…When I was three days old, I was on water. I came out of the hospital, they popped me on a boat and sent me over. So, I’ve been very Kingston, very water since the day I could breathe.”

Casson grew up boating, sailing, and kayaking, and she believes that simply seeing the crowds of people hanging around the water in Kingston inspires the city to participate in water sports.

“I think when you’re constantly exposed to different modalities to get out on that beautiful stretch of water, you’re just sort of compelled to join the masses and there’s nothing more beautiful than being out there on a summery, shimmery day. That, I think, subconsciously just influences. You either run along the waterway or you get out there.”

Head down to the shores of Lake Ontario and you’ll see exactly what Casson means – a variety of passionate people centered around Kingston’s waters. High school and post-secondary students get out on the lake, along with multiple clubs, resulting in a variety of ages and levels of rowers, including experts like Casson. Casson started rowing at Kingston Rowing Club (KRC) – and she’s only ever rowed out of KRC. She says it’s a place that helped birth some of the Canada’s best rowers, like Will Crothers, Rob Gibson, and Nick Pratt.

 

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In fact, after falling in love with rowing in high school, it was these Kingston rowers that inspired Casson to continue competing. She calls them “Kingston alumni” and she envied them, seeing how they started in the same place that she was at.

“You’d heard all of these stories of their athletic excellence and how they climbed the ladder with hard work up to where they ended up, medalling. To me, that was everything that I wanted as an athlete. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can do that too! I want to do that. I have to learn how to do it so well that I end up on the podium as well.’”

Casson speaks with pride about other Kingston legends such as John Armitage, head coach of the Queen’s Rowing program for 40 years, and the current head coach, Rami Maassaran. Brad Brennan, her high school rowing coach was vital to her athletic journey too. Casson calls him her coach, her reason to continue. He pushed her to go on the national team.

“With all that sort of legacy coming out of such a small boathouse, it really shows, if anything, hard work will get you there and that time and time again, you don’t need the best equipment and the best boats and all these excuses that are fine when you’re feeling like complaining, you just need the best environment to get that motivation intrinsically and hard work. It’s written in history.”

A dedicated support system helps too, and Casson is enthusiastic about the people in her life who motivate and ground her. Her women’s pair, women’s single, and her coach, Bill Marshall, help motivate her. She calls teammate Jill Moffatt her sister. While Casson is more serious and critical in the boat, Moffatt is more upbeat, ready to recognize what they did well and what they can do next. Casson also calls herself a huge family person.

 

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“My mom and my dad are like my rocks of reality. I am a very volatile kind of person, I have a lot of energy and I can go down a rabbit hole really quickly or I can spring off and get over-excited, so my parents always ground me, ‘Jenny, you’re doing that thing where you’re losing your mind, come back down!’”

Casson was a CAN Fund #150Women Recipient this year, a grant opportunity founded by Jane Roos for women athletes to help them afford training and cover living expenses. Empowering women in sports is close to Casson’s heart.

“I love sports for strength and for confidence and for collaboration and teamwork and all the fundamentals to be a better human. I would love to see more girls gain that from athletics. I have gotten so much from sports. It has changed me as a person, it changed my outlook on life, it changed how I approach my days…I think it’s so beautiful to have a backbone of your sisters, your teammates and just the confidence that you, your body did something today.”

In addition to encouraging young women to enter the sport, Casson is vocal about the barriers to getting involved with rowing, especially as it is regarded as a white, privileged sport. She is supportive of Rowing Canada’s efforts to push for more diversity in the community.

As Casson looks forward to the Olympics she’s endlessly proud of the Rowing Canada athletes, the Rowing Canada staff, Kingston, and Canada itself.

“I love wearing the Canadian flag. I love being Canadian and I love being from Kingston. If you would have asked me when I was 18 in high school, ‘How do you like being from Kingston?’ I would have said, ‘No, I want to be from Montreal or Toronto or Paris, someplace cool,’ and now I’m like, ‘Yeah, 613, baby, let’s go! I love Kingston!”

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