NXTCHAMP Invitational announced following cancellation of OFSAA track and field

In 2020, the OFSAA Track and Field Championships, Ontario’s biggest high school meet, were cancelled due to COVID-19. When Scott Skimming, head coach of 310 Running in Bolton, Ont., heard that the annual event had been cancelled yet again, he says he decided he had to do something about it — for his athletes and athletes across the province. And so, the NXTCHAMP Invitational was born, and after over a year of waiting, Ontario’s top high school track and field athletes will finally get a chance to compete once again. 

Creating NXTCHAMP

Skimming explains that, ever since events across the country were first cancelled last March, he has noticed that his athletes have lost the “spark that they typically had” when they had a race to work toward. 

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“For the first time ever, athletes were operating without any idea what the goals were other than to just improve in the events they were competing in,” Skimming says. His athletes remained dedicated and continued to train, he says, but without a real goal to chase, they “seemed a little lost.”

As the pandemic progressed and it became clear that COVID-19 wasn’t going to disappear anytime soon, Skimming says he started thinking about the 2021 race schedule. “In the back of my head, I thought, ‘If OFSAA is cancelled again, I have to do something.'” Then, in early February, Skimming received the news: OFSAA had been called off for the second year in a row.  

“I just thought, ‘OK, I want to do something like OFSAA that isn’t OFSAA,'” he says. He began talking to his athletes and posting on social media to see if there would be interest in an OFSAA-like event, and the response was extremely positive. As he had suspected, high school athletes didn’t care what the event was, they just wanted to compete.

Since then, Skimming has worked to turn the idea into a reality, and the NXTCHAMP Invitational is officially set to run from June 18 to 20 at York University‘s Toronto Track and Field Centre. “We’re prepared to do it in June, but we’re also ready to move it later in the summer if that’s what public health needs us to do.” That, he says, is a big difference between his event and OFSAA, as he has more freedom and flexibility to move it around as necessary. 

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Racing during COVID-19

Skimming and 310 Running held three track meets in 2020, so he has some experience with organizing a mid-pandemic event. After those competitions, Skimming says he received some flack for “not taking the pandemic seriously,” but he dismisses those claims. “I’m not flip about the current situation,” he says. “We took the health of our athletes, officials and everyone else who will be participating very seriously at those meets, and we will continue to do so.”

Like last year’s 310 Running meets, the NXTCHAMP Invitational will follow strict rules to ensure everyone involved is safe. The biggest challenge, Skimming says, is maintaining the legal limit of people that are allowed to gather in one place. “We list exactly when athletes can enter the track area,” he says. “Everything needs to be executed with almost military precision, so athletes are competing exactly when they’re scheduled to compete.” 

There will also be safety measures taken inside the venue itself. Races will see runners lined in every other lane rather than side by side, anything athletes touch will be sanitized after each event, throwers will have to bring their own equipment and masks will of course be mandatory other than during competitions. “We’re taking this very seriously,” Skimming says. 

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Now or never 

Other than the simple fact that runners need goals to work toward right now, Skimming says an event like the NXTCHAMP Invitational will also provide athletes with the invaluable chance to put their abilities on display. “Many of our athletes have goals of competing at the collegiate level, and even before COVID there were very few high-level meets where they could showcase their talents,” he says.

Skimming points to the athletes who were in Grade 12 last year when the pandemic hit and erased their senior seasons. “They had virtually no means of showcasing themselves to coaches beyond time trials and what they did the year before.” Today’s 12th-graders are in essentially the same situation, Skimming says, which is why the NXTCHAMP Invitational has to run this year. So far, it looks like it will happen, but there’s one big question: who gets to compete?

Skimming has spent a long time looking at results lists, Athletics Canada rankings and any other race data he could find from the past two years. “We’ve guaranteed invitations to the medallists from the 2019 OFSAA,” he says. In addition to former medallists, Skimming has invited the next six top-ranked athletes in each event. 

“We’re looking for the best athletes in Ontario,” he says. However, he acknowledges the fact that he could have missed athletes who deserve a spot at the meet, and so he has now reached out to coaches across Ontario to find out if there’s anyone they believe should be included in a second round of invitations. 

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“It’s been lots of work, but you want the best, right?” Skimming says, adding that he doesn’t have plans for this to be a one-time event. “We want this to be the most competitive meet in Ontario, and in the long-term, we’d like it to become a meet that everyone aspires to compete in.” 

For now, though, he’s focused on the June event, and while the name NXTCHAMP isn’t well known right now, that could change quickly when it becomes one of the province’s (and country’s) biggest meets of 2021. 

To learn more about the NXTCHAMP Invitational, click here.