Niki Oudenaarden has a spring in her step as the No. 1-ranked female pentathlete at next week’s U Sports Nationals after ankle reconstruction surgery sidelined the St. Albert athlete last season.
Oudenaarden, 23, returns to the Canadian university championship as the Canada West female field athlete of the year for the second time in three years since transferring to the Calgary Dinos from the San Diego State Aztecs.
“The goal is to come away again with a gold in the pentathlon,” said the former high school track and field standout with the Paul Kane Blues. “The game plan is to try and get into the 4,300 point realm and just rally shoot for a solid pent in all the events. Thursday is the pent and the Friday and Saturday I will be doing my open events so I want to be able to recover and come back strong and support my team and hopefully come away with a couple of medals as well.
“I just really want to put U of C back on the map for being an athletic school for track and field.”
The finalist for the 2015 CIS (now U Sports) female field athlete of the year was the pentathlon winner with 4,072 points and was the bronze medallist in shot put in her national university championship debut with the Dinos that year.
In the following the outdoor season, Oudenaarden had surgery on her left ankle after competing at the Summer Universiade in South Korea as the seventh-place finisher in the heptathlon as the first-place javelin thrower.
“It was interesting, especially seeing it was an Olympic year. It was really difficult to take that time away and to just rehab and try and come back as an athlete mentally and physically. It was a fun little challenge,” said Oudenaarden, who “rolled my ankle quite often” at San Diego State and had previously undergone knee and foot surgeries.
“Last year was a really tough year coming out of the surgery and having the time constraints of the Olympic Trials on me and mentally and physically I just was incapable at that time. It was actually a huge burden to even think about the Olympic Trials and so I was very fortunate that I had a really great friend who stayed in Calgary and helped me actually avoid social media for the day and just hang out and focus on other things in life.”
Oudenaarden returned to action this year at a meet in Edmonton and was encouraged by her performance after the lengthy absence.
“It was a bit nerve-wracking to have that opportunity again to do the pent and just to see what I was capable of,” said Oudenaarden, who set what was then a personal-best high jump of 1.74 metres. “It went really well and so we thought just keep it going and see how it goes at Can West.”
Oudenaarden swept all five pentathlon events at the Canada West championships last weekend in Regina for an overall point total of 4,202.
The first-place showings included the 60m hurdles at 9.02 seconds, shot put at 13.75m, long jump at 5.84m, 800m at 2:24.36 and another PB in high jump at 1.78m.
In the open events, Oudenaarden was the top high jumper at 1.69m, the second runner on the Dinos’ winning 4x400 relay team at 3:53.36 and was the runner-up in the long jump at 6.00m and shot put at 13.16m.
Oudenaarden was a deserving recipient of the female field athlete of the year after the medal haul of three gold (pentathlon, high jump and 4x400m relay) and two silver (long jump and shot put).
“It was really nice actually to get awarded that simply because it was such a busy weekend. I ended up doing nine events and six of them were field events so to be able to get recognized for doing all those six field events and doing well in those it was like an honour to have that especially for Can West. I had that two years ago so it was nice to duplicate that again.”
The best of the bunch was the high jump in the pentathlon.
“To be able to get a PB overall by four centimetres from my last jump in Edmonton was amazing. I wasn’t expecting it at all,” said Oudenaarden, who hadn’t jumped over 1.71m for five years prior to achieving the 1.74 mark.
“Apparently, once I cleared it, I screamed so incredibly loud and just like crumpled onto the mat with joy. I was just on cloud nine with that simply because that was my takeoff leg as well, the one I had the surgery on, so I never thought that I would come back strong on that ankle and be able to clear those heights but it happened.”
Overall, the meet was a confidence booster for Oudenaarden, knowing that the member of the “4,200 club for the pent” can still “handle the stresses of being a high level athlete again and have the impact of all those events on my body and still come out strong and be able to perform.”
In the U Sports track and field rankings, the No. 2-ranked female pentathlete in Canada is listed first overall in the pentathlon with 4,217 points, tied for first in high jump at 1.78m, third in long jump at 6.01m and fifth in shot put at 13.75m.
The kinesiology student has one more year of U Sports eligibility remaining with the Dinos after next week’s nationals at the Butterdome in Edmonton.
Upcoming for Oudenaarden is the Mt. SAC outdoor competition next month in San Antonio, Texas.
“I’ve had some really good performances there so I want to try and maintain that and get another good start to the season,” said Oudenaarden, who also hopes to meet the qualification standards for the Summer Universiade at Taipei City and senior worlds at London in August.
