Move over Donovan, there’s another Bailey burning up the track.
Grade 12 Fulton Secondary student Sarah Bailey has committed to the NCAA Division 1 Jacksonville Dolphins in Florida for next fall.
A middle-distance specialist with personal bests of two minutes, 15 seconds in the 800-metre and 4:45 in the 1,500-m, Bailey never really considered track would be her ticket to a full-ride scholarship when she first got serious about the sport.
“I always did it in elementary school and I wanted to keep doing it in high school. I just love it and I was always pretty good at it,” smiled Bailey, who turns 18 in May.
“I like the competitive side of it. You can tell when you’re working hard that you’ll get the results. It’s more on yourself to do it.”
When she first joined the Vernon AAA Track & Field Club, Bailey was pretty much left to her own devices when it came to training for middle distance.
“There was no middle-distance coach before, so I just kind of ran,” she shrugged.
Bailey’s track development received a big boost when Brent Helland began working with the club in her Grade 8 year.
A nationally certified coach and former national competitor, Helland has provided Vernon AAA athletes with plenty of insight and training know-how.
“He really knows when I can push it, or when I need to rest,” said Bailey, who works with the Kiss-FM radio events crew.
“If I’m having a bad day, he knows what to say to make me feel better, and helps me push through that mental aspect as well.”
Helland says he couldn’t ask for a more willing protégé that Bailey.
“She has the drive and desire to do what she wants. She is willing to do the work and she is coachable,” he said.
“She makes my life easy. If they don’t have the right attitude, there’s only so much you can do.”
Helland also credits Bailey for inspiring a new crop of rising track stars.
“She has created something pretty amazing at the club. We’re starting to see the up-and-comers looking up to her,” he said.
And while Bailey still considers herself a work in progress, the results she is posting indicate she is among the best in her age group.
She was a double-gold medallist (800-m and 1,500-m) at provincials, and added an eighth-place result at last year’s youth nationals in Ottawa (she was ranked 15th heading into the event).
“I think I can improve a lot next year with a bigger team, being older and having all those facilities,” said Bailey, who visited the Jacksonville campus in March.
“You could tell that they’re all really close, and it’s a small school. You don’t really get that in a Divison 1 school; it’s hard to find.
“I knew before I went down there that it was one of my top picks, and going down there just sealed the deal.”
Jacksonville University, a private institution located on the banks of the St. Johns River, has an enrollment of 3,600 students.
The Dolphins have won the women’s track and field Atlantic Sun Conference Championships six years in a row.
Bailey trains three times a week with the club, and three times a week on her own. She says the current construction at Polson Park makes workouts a little more challenging, and adds she was disappointed to see the proposed sports complex at Okanagan College get shot down.
“It would have been a huge benefit. We could have held things like the Summer Games,” she noted.
Bailey will compete at high school provincials right before she graduates in June, and hopes to qualify for junior nationals in Winnipeg, where she will be going up against 18- and 19-year-olds.
“I’ll be at the bottom, but it will be good expose myself to faster runners,” she said.
Bailey, who is entering Jacksonville’s honours program, plans to study biology with an aim of entering either pre-med or pre-veterinary studies.
