Olympic silver medalist Jerome Blake is on his way to the Summer Olympic Games in Paris next year but he took the time to make a recent stop in the South Cariboo.
Blake was at the Eliza Archie Memorial School in Canim Lake on Sunday helping a group of young Tsq’escen’ First Nation athletes train in track and field.
The training is part of a partnership between the school and the Okanagan Athletics Club in Kelowna, where Blake got his start. It was one session of an ongoing program that will see the club establish a chapter in Canim Lake and continue working with the young athletes both in the community and at the club’s facilities in Kelowna.
Blake told the teens and pre-teens that believing in themselves is the first hurdle. The path to becoming an Olympian is not easy, but it is worth it, he said.
“All the kids here today, I see a lot of talent,” he said. “And there’s a lot of opportunity to be the first. All you need is the first.”
Blake was the first-ever Olympic athlete to emerge from the Kelowna club, he said. One victory inspires the next.
“Now there are 9, 10, 11 people coming up who could potentially be the next Olympians,” he told them.
Currently in his off-season, when he’s training less to rest his body ahead of competition, Blake said he doubts he would be where he is today if he had not moved to Canada in high school.
“Where I was in Jamaica, my high school and stuff, they had so many people who were already established, who were already faster than me, so what was the point of wasting their time with me,” he said in an interview with the simplymastery.
It was when he moved to Kelowna and met Pat Sima-Ledding, head coach for the Kelowna club, that things began to change. She taught him to understand the sport and how to get better.
“The minute I started learning from her and understanding that I can actually get better, I started trusting and believing in what she was telling me. She saw that I was talented and could go far,” Blake said.
In her opening comments at the training clinic at Eliza Archie, Sima-Ledding, said she was looking forward to the club getting their first Canim chapter rolling. She said to her, track and field is such a universal sport and it was nice to be able to provide some opportunities and get kids active and get them involved in the sport.
“The amount of talent that is here in the community is incredible, so it’s really nice. Hopefully, we can help to develop some of that,” she said. “It really made an impression on me, the first clinic we did in Kelowna, to get to work with athletes with this level of talent is phenomenal. I’m really lucky and honoured.”
Tish Diamond, Tsq’escen’ First Nation’s athletic director, agreed there is a lot of talent in the community, adding that 11 athletes from the band competed at the North American Indigenous Games in July. The partnership with the club will help the young athletes strengthen their skills and she anticipates taking several of them to the Indigenous games in 2027.
Wyatt Archie is one of the athletes who competed at the competition held in Halifax last summer. He said he got into track and field seven or eight years ago, looking for something to do. The first event he tried was the 60-metre. Archie has also competed in discus and javelin, though they are not his favourites to compete in.
“I’m not really a runner,” he said, adding that shot put is his favourite sport. “It seems more free.”
When they were at the games, many of the youth asked how they could keep training. By joining the Okanagan track team, Diamond said the hope is they will go to more meets and keep the momentum going, getting more kids ready for the next NAIG before they age out.
The impact of programs like this is significant, she said. She has been taking kids to the Indigenous games since 2006 and recalled two Canim Lake girls who went to the games in Denver that year to play soccer.
“They didn’t play in town; they played here in the community. And when they went to Denver they won gold medals and came back and joined the soccer team in town. They owned it,” Diamond said.
At one point during a sprint exercise, Sima-Ledding challenged the young athletes to race Blake. They did their best.
Sima-Ledding told the group they have over 200 teammates in Kelowna looking for forward to meeting them and cheering them on.
