Tennant seeking shot put redemption at Games
Grace Tennant is thrilled to be competing at the Niagara 2022 Canada Summer Games.
“This is my second Canada Summer Games and this one is a lot closer to home. The one in 2017 was in Winnipeg. I am really excited to be in Niagara and it’s great to have this competition setting,” she said. “It’s phenomenal. I can’t remember the last time I competed this close to home. It was probably high school.
“There’s not a lot of track meets, especially at this calibre, that happen in the Niagara area. It is fantastic for the sport and fantastic for the area.”
In 2017, she won a bronze medal at the Canada Games in discus and came ‘dead last’ in shot put.
“I did not have a good day at all,” she said, with a laugh.
The lessons she learned in 2017 from the shot put event will help her this time around as she goes for gold again.
“The ring was a bit quicker than I was used to and instead of finding a way to slow myself down, I kind of panicked,” the South Lincoln graduate said. “It’s learning how to adapt to a situation, how can I fix my technique, how can I maybe swap out a pair of shoes so that I can overcome the challenge. I have grown a lot in the past five years with figuring that out.”
Those five years have been spent at Kent State, where she just graduated with a major in heath and physical education.
“My teaching licence is K to 12 and I am hoping to teach eventually.”
She has enjoyed the entire experience of being a NCAA Division 1 athlete.
“I wouldn’t change it for the world. The NCAA system is so competitive and there’s a lot of high energy. My team and coaches were fantastic and the facilities, equipment, weight room were great. I loved it.”
The high point of her Kent State career was her fourth year.
“I made it to the Division 1 national indoor championships, I had the best shot put season of my life and my team ended up winning the women’s outdoor title.”
That year, she placed 10th at indoor nationals with a throw of 16.81 metres, missing the finals by a mere two centimetres.
“It was a very tight competition.”
This year, the former competitor at the world juniors placed third at Mid-America Conference outdoor championships.
Time has flown by for Tennant.
“It feels that I should be preparing myself to go back to campus and take another course load of classes. I have to keep reminding myself that I am done, I have graduated and now I have to move on to the next phase in my life.”
That next phase will include committing full time to training.
“I have always been a student and an athlete and I am really excited to just be an athlete for once and focus all my attention into that.”
She feels she has come a long way as a thrower.
“I think I have gotten stronger and I have gotten a bit faster but I have a lot of strength to gain and lot of speed yet to gain. And I still need to focus on my technique,” she said.
The biggest thing she has gained is experience.
“It is getting into your routine of when you are competing, knowing your competitors, knowing how to warm up and performing to your best each time.”
It is far cry from her early years in the sport.
“When I was younger, you had all those nerves and jitters. Of course, they are still there, but you know how to handle them more now as a mature athlete.”
She is planning to train out of Toronto under coach Richard Parkinson, a high performance coach at Athletics Canada, who also coaches Trinity Tutti.
“My coach keeps saying to me that I need to get a lot stronger. He says, ‘I don’t know how you are throwing so far with the strength level you have.’ I need to progress in the weight room a lot more in the next two years.”
Tennant is not lacking in motivation.
“I want to throw far, I want to succeed, I want to make the teams I want to make and I want to throw to the best of my abilities. The weight room will be the reason why I get there.”
Her short-term goals are to get stronger and get used to being a full-time athlete.
“The long term is every track and field athlete’s goal. It’s to make it to the show; make it to the Olympics. That is coming up in 2024 and the following one is in 2028.”
All track and field events take place at the Canada Games Park. The women’s shot put competition includes qualifiers Wednesday at 3 and 4:10 p.m., with the final on Friday at 10:15 a.m. The discus qualifiers are Friday at 4:45 and 6:15 p.m., while the final goes Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
