April Kippers will be representing St. Albert and Canada at the 2025 FISU Summer World University Games this year in Germany.
The games take place every two years, and this year, they will be held from July 16 to 27 in the Rhine-Ruhr region of Germany. At the competition, around 8,500 student-athletes and officials from over 150 countries will compete in 18 sports.
Kippers is a member of Canada's women's athletics team, which consists of 26 women representing universities from all over Canada. She is one of two pole vaulters on the team, alongside others competing in various sports, including running, shot put, high jump, long jump and hurdles.
She said she heard about the opportunity through an email that one of her head coaches sent to the team, stating that you could declare for an event and go through a selection process to make Team Canada. Kippers said she threw her name in, not expecting to be selected for the team, but then she received an email welcoming her to the team.
"It's really cool. I'm very excited because, like, there's not many opportunities where you get to, like, represent your country, so it'll be a really cool experience," said Kippers. "I'm still kind of in shock about it, like it doesn't feel real yet. Once it gets closer, I'll be like, oh, wow, I am going to Germany to pole vault, that's crazy. But right now I'm still trying to understand that this is actually happening in the first place."
Kippers is also a member of the University of Alberta team and has just completed her first year of university. She said that she had only been pole vaulting since she was 16 years old but had been competing in track since junior high.
She explained that she started doing pole vaulting because her mom saw a social media post by the Edmonton Athletic Association about trying the sport and signed her up.
"She told me when I got home from school that I was going to try pole vault, and then I went, and I ended up joining the club called YEG Pole Vault," said Kippers. "I just really liked it, and I was good at it, so then it just kind of took off from there."
Now, she said her parents, friends and coaches are some of her biggest supporters.
The team trains five days a week, and Kippers said that it remains consistent throughout the summer, similar to how it was during the school year.
"We pole vault once a week," she said. "The rest is like sprint training and lots of weights, and so that's kind of what we're doing right now."
Right now, Kippers says she is on an upward climb and has recently beaten two of her personal bests.
"I'm really hoping by the end of July, I'll be jumping high, like higher than I am now. And hopefully I do really good at qualifying and I'm able to make finals, but we'll see once we're there, because I don't know what other people are gonna be jumping. I don't know what the competition looks like yet, but I'm gonna take it all in and be really thankful that I get to go in the first place and like, see where that takes me, see where it goes."
When Kippers returns from the 2025 FISU Summer World University Games, she will head to nationals before continuing to compete as a second-year student at the University of Alberta.
