Long process earns CSSRA gold for Ridley pair
Ridley College’s championship boat in the CSSRA senior women’s pair was anything but an overnight sensation.
“We did a really good job of working together and finding our rhythm. It took a long time but in the end it was worth it,” said Jade Postma, who combined with Talia Nixon to mine gold Sunday. “It was communicating with each other and knowing what each other wanted.”
Postma first started in the pair last fall. Last year, Nixon won silver in the CSSRA event with a different partner.
“It was quite a whirlwind, especially because she was training with someone else and I was the new person coming in to follow her,” Postma said.
The pair won bronze in the under-19 pair at last November’s National Rowing Championships.
“That was really great for us and that was the peak of our fall training. Through the winter, we are multi-sport athletes so we swam together during the winter and we didn’t spend as much time rowing,” Nixon said.
Both qualified for the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations championships with Nixon winning gold in the 100-metre individual medley.
“Coming back into the spring, it was a little bit of picking up where we left off. Coming into sprints instead of head races, we needed to adjust, refocus, get back into it and see what we could do,” Nixon said. “
The boat won the Mother’s Day Regatta and placed third in the pair in the Ontario small boat time trials for the junior national team. They will be heading to the junior selection camp Monday.
“We took it one day at a time. We focused on Saturday first and then Sunday. Now that we are done for the day, we will start focusing on what we expect for tomorrow and we will approach the camp the same way; one day at a time and then give everything we’ve got at every race,” Nixon said.
Because of Saturday’s Bad Air Day by Mother Nature, there was no final Sunday but two heats with the winner being the fastest time from the heats.
“We were the second heat to go and we won and we were at the end taking a moment for ourselves,” Nixon said. “We reflected on our race and how we felt. We didn’t know what happened in the first heat until we pretty much got back to here (Henley Island) and our coach started talking to us from land. We talked about our race and we were happy with what we did. Winning was just a bonus when we found out.”
Postma and Nixon were also in Ridley’s senior women’s four that won a silver medal. The other members of the boat were Sydney Swick and Charlotte Pieckenhagen.
Postma, a 15-year-old Grade 10 student from Parry Sound, will be back at Ridley College next year while, Nixon, an 18-year-old Grade 12 student from Fredericton, N.B., is going to the University of New Brunswick to play volleyball.
