Niki Oudenaarden is back from the Summer Universiade Games wiser for the experience. The St. Albert athlete finished seventh overall in the heptathlon on the strength of her first-place showing in the javelin.
Niki Oudenaarden is back from the Summer Universiade Games wiser for the experience.
The St. Albert athlete finished seventh overall in the heptathlon on the strength of her first-place showing in the javelin.
“Performance-wise, the numbers itself were not what I was hoping for but the competition and the experience, like the lessons that I had to learn throughout that whole competition, were absolutely amazing,” Oudenaarden explained. “This is probably one of the competitions that I had the most fun in and learned the most, like myself, my sport, the other competitors and how to actually approach a heptathlon. That was probably one of the first heps where I actually experienced all those kind of emotions and allowed them to happen and just kind of learn from them.”
The Universiade is an international competition for university athletes and is considered the second largest multi-sport event in the world behind the Olympic Games.
“The amount of competitors there is massive and the level of competition is fantastic, especially for those in the younger age group like myself,” said Oudenaarden, 21, the second-youngest Canadian female in the heptathlon. “It feels so much more high level than like any of the worlds I've done, like world youth and world juniors and NACAC (U23 North American, Central American and Caribbean championship) Games so this was like a little bit different for me.”
The recent Universiade in Gwangju, South Korea was an eye-opener for the 2015 CIS female field athlete of the year finalist with the Calgary Dinos.
“It was such a great learning experience because it was a different hep than I had ever done in my life. We started at nine in the morning for our first event and our last event finished at 9 p.m. both days so we had four events in that time frame but we couldn't go back to the village and sleep there. They give us a common room for the multis and it has food and showers but it's not very fun to sit there the whole day,” said the former Paul Kane High School track star. “After every event we would have an hour to almost a four to five hour gap until we had to start warming up again. It was just different trying to figure out how you're going to warm up, when you're going to warm up and what you're going to do so you're not completely exerting yourself before you even compete.”
Oudenaarden's 5,596-point total was 369 behind the winner, Anna Maiwald of Germany. Georgia Ellenwood, 20, of Canada placed fifth at 5,665.
“It was a very mediocre competition for myself,” said Oudenaarden, last year's U23 NACAC heptathlon champion with 5,592 points. “I can't blame it on anything but myself in that situation.”
Her winning throw in the javelin was 43.61 metres.
“It's a pretty pathetic throw,” said Oundenaarden, who fell short of her personal best of 49.73m. “Having that six-metre drop was kind of heartbreaking for me. It was pouring rain at that time, too, and when it rains in Korea it's like a miniature typhoon.”
She also placed fourth in the long jump (5.91m), fifth in the high jump (1.71m) and shot put (13.04m), sixth in the 800m (2:19:22), eighth in the 200m (25.54) and 11th in the 100m hurdles (15.57).
“High jump was actually a decent competition for me,” said the five-foot-10 Oudenaarden. “I almost cleared 1.74 (her PB) and that would've been a season best for a while because I haven't jumped that since I was 16.
“Hurdles is one of my weakest events,” she added. “Shot put is usually one of my stronger events and I generally throw about a metre to two metres further than what I did in that situation.”
The outdoor heptathlon ranks right up there with the indoor pentathlon for Oudenaarden.
“If you're good in hurdles and high jump you're great at the pent, but in the hep you can have your strengths in any other event and it will help you move up (the point standings). The hep has the javelin and that usually helps me move up a little bit,” said this year's CIS female pentathlon champion on day one of the competition and bronze medallist in shot put at 14.01m on day two.
“The pent and the hep really are the most fun because at the end of the day as soon as we all cross that line in the 800 we're all high fiving each other and hugging each other. It's such a bonding experience and no other event has that. All the other events you go in, you compete and you're done and usually you don't get to meet the people you competed with.”
Oudenaarden compiled 4,072 points in the pentathlon at the CIS championships, 262 more than the second-place finisher.
“That was really fun because in the pentathlon I haven't really scored over 4,000 before so having the chance to score more than 4,000 and knowing that there was so much more I could've done in the pentathlon was great,” said the Canada West pentathlon champion with 3,981 points and shot put silver medallist at 12.95m.
“It kind of helped me get another plateau because there are moments where you're like doing the same thing continually and then all of a sudden you break in and after that point you can never go back to the scores you were doing previously.”
She has two more seasons of CIS eligibility with the Dinos after spending two years with the San Diego State Aztecs and appearances at the NCAA championships.
“I've never had so much emphasis on an indoor season like I did this season because in the States it's the outdoor season that we care about so I've never had that much emphasis on the pentathlon but it was so fun because the Calgary Dinos' team is such a family and they're so encouraging in every event you do. They're such a fun little group to train with and to travel with,” said Oudenaarden, who suffered a concussion in December and missed the start of the indoor season.
“It's such a different game (with the Dinos), like how we train and how we compete. In the States they're very demanding of your performances and if you don't achieve them you do consequence workouts but here it's do the best that you can do. It's funny because then you do better because you're not feeling all that stress riding on you all the time.”
Oudenaarden decided to transfer to the Dinos while training in Calgary last summer in preparation for the NACAC Games.
“I do love San Diego. It was a really good opportunity for me to go down there. The coaches there were good but last summer just reminded me how much I loved the sport and how much I loved the competition and the training. At the NACAC Games it wasn't my best score I've ever done, but it was one of my favourite heps also before Korea because it just reminded me the heptathlons can be fun and competing can be great,” said Oudenaarden, who lives with her sister, Tamara, an elite-level speed skater, in Calgary.
“Leaving the States was definitely a hard decision but it was one I really had to make because it was either stay in the States and potentially lose all the desire for track (this is her 11th year in the sport) and potentially quit but coming back to Calgary it was like re-finding my love for it and getting the technique back and enjoying the sport again so with that change I'm enjoying the sport again, I'm learning so much more and I'm getting better and I don't think I could've got better in if I was in the States.”
Oudenaarden will now focus on the upcoming season with the Dinos while training for the Olympic trials in Edmonton for the Rio 2016 Summer Olympics. She is currently listed in the middle of the top-10 Canadian rankings in the heptathlon.
“Rio is a major goal for myself. That is what I will be aiming most of my training towards,” said the kinesiology student. “It's awesome the trials are on my home turf. St. Albert has been such an amazing community to grow up in and so supportive it's ridiculous. Having the crowd behind you helps so much. We're performers and the more people that we get to perform before the better the performance is.”
