By Kaitlyn LeBoutillier
Being a student-athlete requires a lot of balance. Interestingly enough, so does being a talented gymnast.
Selena Pang, a recent St. Matthew Catholic High School graduate and a Kanata Rhythmic Gymnastics Club athlete, has a lot of experience in both.
Pang has earned numerous accolades across gymnastics and academics, and she says the real trick to success is managing her time.
That’s especially important because she lives in Orleans but travels to Kanata after school most days for practice with her club’s national-level program.
“During lunchtime, or if I finished my work for one course, I’d be doing the homework for the next course to get it done in that class,” Pang explains. “And then in the car, I get time to sleep, because the drive [to the gym] could vary from an hour and a half, sometimes even two hours. Then I would get home and just continue studying.”
It’s a busy schedule, but one she welcomed with open arms.
“I think I definitely sacrifice a little sleep hours for it, too,” she smiles.
In her final season in Kanata, Pang placed seventh at Elite Canada, and she also posted a top-10 result at the Canadian Championships, held in Gatineau last month. This was the first time Pang got to take part in a national competition close to home.
“Competing in Gatineau was an enjoyable experience,” she recounts. “Even though it was in a different province, the commute was shorter than my regular drive to our training gym in Kanata since I live in Orleans.”
Pang’s next stop will be considerably farther west. With her sights set on an academic future, Pang will be attending the University of Alberta for computer science in the fall.
Upon graduating from St. Matt’s, Pang received a coveted 2024 Schulich Leader Scholarship, created to support entrepreneurial-minded high school graduates studying in a science, technology, engineering or math program.
Each high school in Canada can nominate one student to receive scholarships worth $100,000 or $120,000, with 100 available in total.
Pang sees herself as a future start-up founder “using the skills learned from my computer science degree to bring technological advancements to sports,” she highlights.
Pang wants to create technology like the robotic umpires seen in baseball or the in/out-of-bounds reviews in tennis, but for more subjective/artistic sports like gymnastics or figure skating.
“I find that some sports still solely rely on human judgment and could use technology to have more objective criteria so that there’s less space for even unnoticed bias,” Pang outlines.
But Pang’s future plans don’t only include pursuing her studies. Her next goal is to compete in the 2025 FISU Summer World University Games in Germany. Though rhythmic gymnastics isn’t a varsity university sport, Pang is still excited to train at the University of Alberta.
She says that making it to the FISU Games would be extra special since they were first hosted in Canada at the University of Alberta in the University’s Pavillion, which better known as the Butterdome, soon to be Pang’s new home gym.
Training to prepare and qualify for those Games while also pursuing her computer science degree will definitely make a full schedule for Pang, but she’s used to it.
“Managing school and gymnastics helped me develop better organization and time management skills,” Pang indicates. “It’s been really important because I find that I’ve been able to bring these skills over into my school academic life, as well.”
She adds that one of the most impactful ways that sport has helped her grow is through working towards her goals.
“Knowing that hard work does translate into positive results in gymnastics has been reassuring. If I’m working on a movement, then naturally over time I’ll get more fluent and it’ll be easier,” Pang details. “Then in school, if I put more effort in, if I do more questions or practice tests, my score will be higher. So you just see how everything’s similar despite being really different.”
– with files from Emma Zhao
2024 Ottawa High School Best Series concludes
Editor’s note: This story officially brings to a close our 2024 Ottawa High School Best Series, we hope you’ve enjoyed following along these past few weeks! A big thank you to all involved in making the series possible, especially our presenting partners at the Louis-Riel Sports-Études program.
It’s been a pleasure sharing the stories of these standout student-athletes, though we also know we’ve only scratched the surface of the many tales out there. There is no central registry to reference which local athletes are headed where for varsity sport – our High School Best Series features are a product of scouring through social media announcements, messages from coaches, readers, parents and contacts in the local sports scene.
While our 2024 HSB series coverage is now complete, we’d definitely still love to learn about any student-athletes we may have missed or who might join university teams at a later time, so that we can try to keep an eye on their future pursuits. You can email us at editor@ottawasportspages.ca.
Read More of our 2024 High School Best Series, presented by Louis-Riel Sports-Études, as we tip our caps to top local student-athletes at: OttawaSportsPages.ca/Ottawa-High-School-Best-2024
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