Jendaya Shields '22 Recruiting Profile

Coming from a small town in the ski famous south eastern mountains of British Columbia, I was active from a very early age and learned to downhill ski at 18 months, and participated in five different sports before entering school.  I have been a multi-sport athlete all my life which has helped me develop an excellent base of transferable athleticism but also resiliency, commitment, risk tolerance and  persistence. Along with track I competed Junior Olympic gymnastics to Level 7 until this year, excelling in Vault, and am still the goalie for my high school senior field hockey team. 

My small track club with just one coach trains all events, out of necessity in order to accommodate everyone's preferred events. That means I am still sprinting, hurdling and jumping in addition to my focus on throwing. Having only six hours a week of practice time for our club and the needed multi-event approach means that I have not been training the same volume of throws specific practices or receiving nearly as much instruction in throwing as my competitors from larger centers have been.  But, I have developed excellent versatility and athleticism! I choose to see this as a strength because it means that I still have a lot of potential left on the table waiting to be developed.  Even with less training time, less coaching and losing the 2020 outdoor and 2021 indoor season to the pandemic, I was ranked #2 in British Columbia and #8 in Canada for U18 female shot put this season (as of Sept 21, 2021). 

Academically, I have always worked hard to get the best grades I can. In elementary school I competed on the math team, and won awards at local and regional science fairs.  School doesn't always come easy but my background in sport helps me be a better student by focusing on working hard, doing what I can in order to be successful and not dwelling on things that might not go the way I had hoped. I have an 86% average over my grade 10 and 11 years, even with the impact of covid, online learning and compressed quarter system instruction which made my grade 11 courses very fast paced and challenging. Despite pandemic challenges in the learning environment, I was able to achieve a 100% perfect mark in Social Studies 11, and 91% in Psychology 11 which I am very proud of.

I am pursuing a degree in Sociology, with an interest in law and society, and social justice as focal areas.