Twenty-two-year-old soccer player Tianna Pius from Prince George wowed Olympic talent scouts at a recent RBC Training Ground Olympic talent combine in the city, and will now attending a regional event with the top 100 ‘future Olympian’ prospects in the province.
Pius attended the RBC Training Ground qualifier in Prince George in January. The regional final, held at the Oval in Richmond, is happening on April 7.
RBC Training Ground gives local athletes – no matter what sport they are involved in – the chance to test their strength, speed and endurance in front of officials from 14 Olympic sports, and earn ‘Future Olympian’ funding from RBC
Pius recently completed her fifth season as a midfielder with the UNBC Timberwolves women’s varsity soccer team.
RBC Training Ground – the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and RBC initiative, in partnership with CBC Sports, to bring new and undiscovered athletes into Canada’s Olympic talent pool, is holding its BC regional final on April 7 in Richmond.
The 100 participating athletes (including two from Summerland) were the top performers at qualifying events held in Prince George, Langley, Burnaby, Kamloops, Kelowna and Victoria.
At these local events they performed speed, power, strength and endurance benchmark tests in front of officials from the Canadian Olympic Committee and 14 national sport organizations. Their performances earned them a spot in the Vancouver regional final, where they will have a chance to earn funding from RBC, administered by a sport interested in working with them, in the form of the high-performance sport resources they need to achieve their podium dreams.
The program is now in its third year. In 2017, more than 300 athletes out of a total of over 2,100 athletes who attended RBC Training Ground events were invited for additional testing by a national sport governing body (including 52 from British Columbia). Thirty athletes (including six from BC) were then selected to receive ongoing support funding from RBC in order to pursue their Olympic dreams (including travel, coaching and nutrition expenses).
