Two final throws for all the marbles to take the lead, the most unlikely of results and in the end, a Moose Jaw gold medal.
Vanier’s Delaney Townsend came away with the provincial title after putting together a throw of 36.16 metres on her final attempt, winning one of two golds for South Central during competition Saturday.
“It went really well, it was super nervewracking and super exciting all at once,” Townsend said a day after the intense competition.
The event was as standard as could be through the first round of throws and into the final set of attempts in the championship round. Then, everything got very interesting, very quickly.
Townsend went into the last round with the lead after throwing a personal best of 34.99 metres, a mark she hoped would stand the test – and for the majority of the way, it did just that.
Until Bellevue’s Nicole Kramchynsky hit the runway and unleashed a monster 36.16 metre dart.
“The whole time I was thinking ‘okay, as long as no one throws 35, I’m good’,” Townsend said.
“Then (Kramchynsky threw) and so at that point I knew I needed to dig deep into my inner self to find the strength to pull that throw out of my butt,” she added with a laugh
‘That’ throw? Well, we’ll let Townsend explain what happened.
“We ended up throwing the exact same throw right down to the exact same centimetre,” she said. “It was super crazy when the lady told me ‘you guys just tied’ and I was in absolute disbelief that we threw the exact same throw.”
As anyone who’s seen a javelin competition knows, an event coming down to the mere centimetre is almost unheard of. To straight-up tie? Near impossible.
But it happened – and because Townsend had that second-best-of-the-day 34.99-metre throw in her pocket, the gold medal went to her.
The victory capped off a season of success for the first-year senior, with the only setback coming during the Moose Jaw Invitational. Other than that it was all gold, all the time.
“The one meet I didn’t win gold at a girl from Swift beat me, but that was just not my day, I wasn’t throwing very well,” Townsend explained. “So it was nice to be able to come back win at districts and this weekend.”
Redvers’ Jessica Magotiaux won bronze with a 34.52 metre effort.
Riverview’s Jessica Kreutzer was South Central’s other entry and threw 26.39 metres to finish 16th overall.
