Donning the red and white, finally

After years of longing to don the Team Canada singlet she proudly had tacked up on her wall, Emma Neigel finally got the chance to slip the red and white over her shoulders this past summer.

Neigel grew up running the Muskeg Creek Trails and training on local treadmills, as those were the only available options to an aspiring track athlete in a town that does not have a track.

After gaining an interest in horticulture working at a local greenhouse, Neigel was recruited by a Mississippi State University coach looking for track athletes who showed great improvement.

In her junior year at the school, she broke the school record in her first attempt at her her now-main event: the three-kilometre steeplechase. Her time was 10:19.

“When people hear of steeplechase, they think of horses. It's kind of similar - you're jumping over these big barriers about every 100 metres, and you have the water jump once in a lap, ” she said. “It's kind of the most extreme track event, I would say. It's a good mix of strength, speed and endurance. ”

In July 2016, Neigel represented Team Alberta in Belgium, where she achieved her time that would later qualify her to represent Canada on the international stage.

This past June, Neigel did not even know she would be flying to Abidjan, C ôte d'Ivoire, Africa for the Francophone Games two months later, until she got the call last minute that she had qualified to be on Team Canada.

“I'd never been on a national team before, so it was a huge deal for me, ” she said. “I never wanted to wear (the Team Canada singlet) until I actually made the team, so I actually got to wear it for the first time which was really exciting. ”

Unfortunately, much of Team Canada came down with food poisoning at the July competition, and Neigel said she got hit hard the night before her race.

“That was disappointing but it's an encouragement to try harder and make another team and do better, ” she said. “I don't want to really let it let me down. It was awesome. ”

Bud Ottosen coached Neigel through her high school years in Athabasca, and said the young runner made good progress in the time he coached Neigel.

“She made pretty good progress, ” he said. “She was held back a bit by the fact that we weren't in a big population centre where she could get a lot of races in and a lot of competition through the season. ”

He added Neigel achieved her spot on Team Canada through a lot of hard work, along with natural talent.

“She's put in the work to get the results, ” he said. “She's a talented runner for sure, but talent doesn't get you there alone. You have to really work hard, and she's done that so I was pleased. ”

Today, Neigel is aiming to compete at the 2018 NACAC (North America, Central America and Caribbean) Track Championships in Toronto next August. She is working on her masters at Mississippi State, focused on mapping potential habitats to plant butterfly milkweed, in an effort to sustain decreasing populations of the monarch butterfly.