Winning never gets old for Prince George high jumper Alyx Treasure.
She's owned the national championship title the past three years and made it four in a row when she jumped 1.92 metres (six-foot-three) to win the competition Sunday in Ottawa.
"I was really happy with the win and the competition itself went really well," said Treasure, reached in Madrid, Spain, where she's entered in a IAAF World Challenge meet on Friday.
"I definitely wanted to jump world standard (1.94 m) and that was a hard pill to swallow when I was close. It was just some technical mistakes. The bar isn't a problem for me to jump. It's just timing-wise and I haven't been able to be with my coach. It was the first competition in months that I've had my coach."
Since 2012, Treasure has been working with Cliff Rovelto, the head coach at Kansas State University. She graduated from K-State in 2015 but stayed in Kansas with Rovelto and used that as her base last summer when she represented Canada at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. She made the finals In Rio, jumping a personal-best 1.94 m and finished 17th.
Now in her first season on the pro circuit, Treasure is discovering the hectic schedule and long trips to different times zones, competing in events without Rovelto around to offer his expertise, has been a difficult adjustment. But she wouldn't trade it for anything.
"It's been tough, it's been a year of hard-earned lessons, how to be on the circuit, how to be a professional," she said. "The difference of being able to jump in your country and then having to travel across the world repetitively with training and all that, has been a learning curve," she said.
"I'm happy with the way I've dealt with everything but, ideally, I have some things I have to figure out before I start jumping the way I want."
Treasure, who turned 25 on May 15, will be in Podova, Italy for another IAAF meet on Sunday. She's waiting to find out if she will be invited to a Diamond League meet in Monte Carlo, Monaco on July 21 and could have one other meet on her schedule before the world championships in London, England, Aug. 4-13.
"I still need to jump standard for me to official make the team and if I do not make standard then I have to wait on invites," Treasure said. "It's a safer bet for me just to jump (1.94) this week."
Treasure has been living in Toronto, where the national team trains, but tries to get back to Manhattan, Kan., as much as she can to train with Rovelto. Her season highlight so far came May 25 when she competed in Jamaica, where her father Steve is from, and won the silver medal, jumping 1.90 m at the Jamaican International in Kingston. Now ranked 19th in the world, Treasure jumped in two indoor meets in the winter and established a new indoor personal best 1.89m in Slovakia Feb. 8. She's had five outdoor meets this season and her passport is starting to fill up with international entry stamps.
"It's tiring, no one really realized how much sleeping and travel it is," she said. "It's not as exciting as you kind of envision it but the competitions are great. I can't get that anywhere else. I can come to Europe for a couple of weeks and I'm jumping against the best in the world at every competition. This is where I need to be if I want to be competitive.
"Coming off of the (Olympics) last year (world championships) is definitely on the radar as the next step this year. It hasn't been on my mind consistently until recently and now it's time to get into that mind frame."
