In the beginning, she won everything and her first name was either Alyxandria or Alyxis.
That was in 2001, when Alyx Treasure's name first appeared in The Citizen, winning multiple gold medals for the first time at the Spruce Capital Invitational in Prince George and then repeating her efforts at the B.C. Junior Development Championships in Langley a month later. That July in Langley, the nine-year-old brought home five gold medals for winning the 60-metre hurdles, the 100m and 200m sprints, the long jump and, of course, the high jump.
"Alyx Treasure may want to buy herself a display case," The Citizen's Jason Peters wrote in May 2004, after she took four gold medals at a track meet in Kamloops and set an age-group record in the high jump.
And so Treasure continued to grow up before our eyes in the pages of The Citizen. Once she reached high school, her name appeared regularly during the winter months for her work on the basketball court, first for the Lakewood Lakers and then the D.P. Todd Trojans, followed by the summer months on the track. In the summer of 2006, the 14-year-old was as red hot as the 38 C weather, winning gold in long jump, triple jump and high jump at the Apple Bowl in Kelowna.
The following year, she kept winning.
She set a new Canadian high-jump record at the Legion national juvenile track and field championships, clearing 1.76m. That was after being named to the Team B.C. girls under-15 basketball team.
That would be the pinnacle of her basketball career, which she gave up after that season to focus on her blossoming abilities on the track, particularly in the high jump. She became the B.C. high school champion and reigning record holder when still only in Grade 10. Her winning leap of 1.82m at the provincials broke a record that had stood for 18 years.
"Probably an Olympian in the making," reported the Vancouver Province after seeing Treasure's performance at Burnaby's Swangard Stadium. Her coach, Tom Masich, compared Treasure to Canadian high jumping legend Debbie Brill, a gold medallist in the Commonwealth and Pan-Am Games, as well as a three-time Olympian.
Two months later, she went to Sherbrooke, Que., and broke a 32-year-old national high-jumping record in the 17-and-under girls division.
In the off-season, she was named the female high school athlete of the year.
Injuries plagued her 2009 season but she managed to make Team Canada for the world youth track championships, where she finished tied for 11th.
In 2010, she won the provincial high school championship for the third consecutive time, becoming only the second B.C. girl after Brill to do so.
That summer, she turned down offers from Florida State, the University of Southern California and the University of Idaho, choosing UBC in Vancouver for one year before transferring to Kansas State in 2011. She then sat out for nearly 18 months, undergoing ankle surgery to deal with a nagging injury dating back to her junior basketball days.
Once she returned, she rose through the NCAA ranks, taking silver at the outdoor championships in 2014 before topping the field at the Canadian track and field championships.
"With her injury woes seemingly behind her, the 22-year-old from Prince George has removed any doubts she's good enough to compete in next year's world championships and the 2016 Olympics," declared The Citizen's Ted Clarke that August.
Last summer, she defended her Canadian title and then headed to the Pan-Am Games in Toronto, where she finished seventh. The night before she left for Toronto, she was down at Masich Place Stadium, the place where it all began for her, offering tips and motivation to a new generation of Prince George Track and Field Club members.
This past May, for the first time in her illustrious career, she cleared the bar at 1.93m, the Olympic standard for women. After winning her third consecutive Canadian title this past weekend, she got the news she had been waiting for.
"It's OFFICIAL I'm an Olympian!!!" she gleefully tweeted Monday.
Fifteen years after her name first appeared in The Citizen's sports pages, Prince George and all of Canada will be cheering her on next month in Rio de Janeiro.
-- Managing editor Neil Godbout
