“I was in grade 7, and my gym teacher came up to me and said that she’s seen me run around the playground and stuff, and thought I was pretty quick. She said, ‘why don’t you come out and just try the track and field team.’ I said ‘okay, sure.’ I ended up destroying every record that I ran for. And after that, I did it the next season, and did it after that, and after that, then I said I’m going to try this and joined a club. And from there my love for the sport grew, I made my first Team Canada, I haven’t looked back since.⠀⠀
My first Team Canada was the Youth Olympics. I made the Youth Olympic team. When I went to trials, I was the underdog by a lot. We went to Florida, I represented Canada there. I remember going up against the Jamaicans, the U.S., Barbados, and I was overwhelmed to say the least but I knew that was my time or my time wasn’t going to come. And so I dug deep, ended up getting third. A bronze medal in my 100m and a 6th place in my 200m, and I can still picture getting that phone call. I had gone out for lunch with my friends, this was at the end of grade 11, close to my birthday too. We just decided we were going to go out for lunch, and then I got a phone call from the Canadian Olympic Team representative. And he just said ‘Hi Tegan’, and I just said ‘Hi!’ I didn’t expect it. And he just said, what are you doing in August of 2014 and in that moment I knew I had made my first National Team for Canada and I’ve never been so happy in my entire life and I’ve never cried so much in my entire life.” – Tegan Wilson, Canadian Sprinter with @ubctbirds (1/4)
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