When I was in grade 2 I got special permission to stay back from a field trip to a science center because it was on the same day as track and field at school. I'm not sure how I could have been that passionate about track and field at such a young age, but maybe I just hated science that much! I competed with the kids a year older than me and I was so nervous, but I loved the feeling and that's how I think I got hooked. I literally felt sick to my stomach with nerves but it was a feeling that I looked forward to each spring when track and field rolled around. I started training competitively when I was 11 but back then I had dreams of being a long distance runner. When I was in grade 8 I broke a school board record for triple jump and since then I have been training competitively for jumping. Mental game is important to my performance because my sport is very mentally demanding and often what separates the successful athletes from everyone else is who can stay composed, relaxed, and more than anything, patient. I was very successful at a very young age and as I grew older it was very hard for me to accept that I wasn't going to keep jumping further and further by huge margins every single time I stepped on the runway. More than anything mental training gave me tools for dealing with adversity. It helped me deal with disappointment and even success. It really just kept me going forward in the right direction and get the most out of every situation. I had planned to compete in the NCAA but the coach I was going to work with quit his job so I ended up going to Western University. During that first year of university I struggled with accepting the change of plans. That's when I started working on my mental game and it really helped me come to terms with things and from there the improvements just kept coming. We talked about a lot of underlying things that I didn't even know were holding me back as an athlete. It was really great just having someone to talk things through and make sense of everything that was going on in my head. Working on my mental game helped me learn to be patient, and I understood that I was moving in the right direction even when it felt like I was plateauing. I learned to find the good in all things I experienced so that nothing was a 'waste', and learned relaxation techniques.