Several Salmon Arm Secondary athletes are being recognized for their achievements with scholarships that will allow them to compete at the post-secondary level.
Sage King, Glynis Sim, Brandon Sanford, Julia Anderson and Tricia Fair are moving on to universities and colleges across the continent.
King, who played defensive end for the SAS football team, accepted a scholarship to SFU. He attributed his success to the coaching staff he learned from during his seven years of football in Salmon Arm, as well as his father and brother who helped him train. King will be studying general arts in his first semester at SFU, but said that he is interested in transferring to computer engineering.
Sim will be competing in cross-country and track and field for Arizona State University. Sim represented Canada last summer at an international youth track meet in Columbia. She was also the high school provincial champion in steeplechase in 2015. Sim said she plans to study kinesiology.
Sanford will be going joining the Vanier Cup-defending champion UBC football team as a right guard. He recently attended UBC’s spring camp.
“It was a big jump compared to normal high school practices. We had coaches all over the place yelling at us, telling us to do new things,” Sanford said. “I still need a lot of training compared to some of them, but I think I did well.”
Like Sim, Sanford plans to study kinesiology.
Anderson will be attending North Country College in New York State on a soccer scholarship.
“It’s really exciting to be in a country where a lot of money is thrown at women’s athletic programs, especially soccer,” Anderson said.
Anderson chose to attend North Country College despite offers from division-one schools in hopes of securing playing time in her first year and moving on to a larger school in the future. She plans to study humanities with a focus on political science.
Fair, who swam for the Sockeyes summer swim club in Salmon Arm, will be moving on to the University of Lethbridge.
“I found the school through some friends from the summer club,” Fair said.
Fair received interest from several other schools in Canada and the U.S. by promoting herself online, a strategy that she said was important for high school athletes interested in competing at the next level.
Fair will be enrolling in general sciences with hopes of moving on to study medicine.
Salmon Arm Secondary Athletic Director Rob Neid said that it was unusual to have this many athletes from one graduating class receive these types of athletic scholarships.