Seven months ago, track athlete Cassie Keeping added some jump to her sport.
Her landing spot could be the Canadian Olympic trials.
Keeping, a Prince George product who is attending Siena Heights University in Adrian, Mich., had always specialized in flat races but, at the urging of her coach, started training in hurdles. She quickly mastered the art of the high speed leap and is now at the point where she's a legitimate contender for a spot in this summer's Olympic trials.
In the 400-metre hurdles, Keeping would need to run a time of one minute two seconds to qualify for the trials, June 27-30 in Calgary. Currently, she's posting times in the neighbourhood of 1:04 flat.
"By the time the qualifying round comes up, I should be running 1:02 for sure," said the 22-year-old Keeping, a 2007 graduate of Prince George secondary school. "The Olympic trials are a major goal for me right now."
If Keeping does make it to the trials, a top-two result would give her a spot on Team Canada for the Olympics, July 27 to Aug. 12 in London. She realizes, however, she's unlikely to be on a plane to England.
"Canada does have a couple of really good hurdlers ahead of me and they're way more experienced," she said. "But if I can just make the trials, and if I can do well there, then that gives me a lot of hope for the future."
The town of Adrian, home of Siena Heights, is located southwest of Detroit.
Two weekends ago at the Don Kleinow Memorial meet, hosted by Siena, Keeping finished first in the 400m hurdles with a clocking of 1:05.72. The Kleinow meet was a National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics event, and Siena Heights competes in the Wolverine-Hoosier Athletic Conference of the NAIA.
Earlier in April, Keeping and her Siena Heights teammates were on the campus of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Mich., for the Spartan Invitational. In that meet, Keeping went head-to-head with NCAA Division 1 athletes and finished an impressive fifth in the 400 hurdles in a time of 1:04.43. In the 100m hurdles, she blazed to fourth place in 15.40.
"It made me feel like I was on top of the world, knowing that I could compete against girls like that -- that I don't need to go to a big school to run well," she said. "I can run well at Siena."
Also at the Spartan Invitational, Keeping helped Siena's 4x100 and 4x400 relay teams to third- and fourth-place finishes. For her overall excellence on the track, she was chosen as a WHAC athlete of the week for the first time in her three years at Siena.
Keeping's next big event is this weekend. She'll be in Hillsdale, Mich., for the Gina Relays. There, she'll again get the chance to test herself against NCAA Division 1 runners.
"It's one of the biggest ones of our outdoor season so far," said Keeping, who is studying criminal justice at Siena Heights. "Big NCAA Div. 1 schools will be there, like Michigan State University and University of Michigan and Ohio State, and a lot of big Division 2 schools go to it. It's a three-day meet and it's really prestigious."
