Caleb Emon knows he has the brains, the athletic ability and the unrelenting drive to advance beyond community sports. He was just a young boy when he started thinking about expanding his own horizons.
He took his first tumbles on gymnastics mats at age 3 and by the time he was seven Emon wanted to take ballet lessons to help meet the standards to join the National Circus School in Montreal, a breeding ground for future acrobats in the Cirque du Soleil.
When he reached Grade 8, he started thinking track and field offered his best chance at attracting a college scholarship and began emailing NCAA coaches, asking them what he needed to do to train himself to get on college recruiting lists by the time he graduated high school. The 16-year-old Duchess Park Secondary School student still has a couple years of school ahead of him before he figures out where his postsecondary future lies but he’s already got the jump on most of his peers.
Emon is an honour-roll Grade 10 student in the French immersion program at Duchess Park and for four afternoons per week he’s part of the PacificSport North sport school on the UNBC campus. He and other student-athletes train together in the weight room and in the gym and they have full-credit classes that focus on nutrition, mental training and sport-related career planning.
Years of training with the Prince George Gymnastics Club in artistic gymnastics and trampoline developed Emon’s exceptional strength and flexibility so when he was looking for an outdoor activity he decided to give track and field a try. He joined the Prince George Track and Field Club six years ago and thought he might want to be a sprinter/hurdler but stopped jumping hurdles after a few too many faceplants. He's still fast on his feet and competes in short distance running events but is focused more on high jumping and long jumping.
Emon wants to compete in the Olympics and he knows that’s not aiming too high. Prince George Track and Field Club alumni and Prince George native Alyx Treasure did it five years ago when she competed in the high jump event at the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.
“I wasn’t aware of her until she came to visit here in 2016, just before the Olympics,” said Emon. “I had no idea. It definitely makes me happy to see someone from Prince George do well, and it makes me want to do better too.”
The high jump is intimidating to many track athletes but Emon has never had that fear and looks forward to the day when he can jump his six-foot height and clear the bar at 1.83m.
“I just think it’s really cool because it’s not something that most people can do,” he said. “It’s also fun to watch for me.”
Ross Brown is his jumping coach at the track club. Emon’s personal best in the high jump is 1.75 metres (five-foot-nine). By comparison, Bazil Spencer of Quesnel, the PGTFC record holder for senior boys high jump, jumped 2.03 metres in July 2019 to win the U-20 national championships. Emon’s PB in the long jump is 5.8 m and he’s finished the 100m in 12.1 seconds.
After years of artistic gymnastics, Emon started trampoline gymnastics in 2015, around the same time as national-level athlete Anna McDonald of Prince George. He still competes on the trampoline and last year qualified for the national championships but the event was canceled because of COVID. He won the virtual provincial meet this year in April when the video routine he submitted was judged the best of the lot.
Prince George hosted the Canada Winter Games in 2015 and he remembers the teams training at the gymnastics club at Exhibition Park and watching some of the athletes jump high enough to brush against the ceiling.
“I’ve been in gymnastics as long as I can remember,” said Emon. “It gives me a lot more chances to work on jumping if I have to exercise and really work at it and there’s lot of cross-training. There’s a lot of flexibility (exercises) and doing high jumping, that really helps.”
His gymnastics coach, Carolyn Emon, is also his mom. She had a background in dancing and competitive swimming before she moved to Prince George 13 years ago. Carolyn started coaching kinder gym, the youngest age group, at the gymnastics club and that’s what got Caleb started.
“He’s a pretty flexible kid and the tumbling lends itself to high jump and the double-mini for trampoline lends itself to long jump because you’re doing the sprints up the runway and you have to take off on one foot and land two feet,” said Carolyn. “He does get a lot of cross-training that way.
“I would say if he was able to train track more often, just because the season is so short in Prince George, he would definitely be better at track because he’s always more nervous to try new skills with trampoline and it takes us a lot more pushing. Whereas track just feels natural to him.”
Aside from a couple virtual club meets at Masich Place Stadium, the 2021 track and field meet schedule has been wiped out by the pandemic. Emon has been to the provincial high school meet just once before, in 2019, but was injured and wasn’t able to perform up to his true capabilities. Those two years of training since then and the work he’s put in to improving his jumps are showing in his results on the practice field.
“I jump a lot higher, I feel like I have a lot more power and everything comes a lot easier now,” he said.
The PGTFC is hosting a club meet June 12-13 at Masich Place Stadium. Emon will have aged out for track and field if and when Prince George hosts the 2022 B.C. Summer Games but will be eligible to compete in trampoline, which allows older athletes.
