Anastas Eliopoulos
SCHOOL: Vancouver College FRESHMAN’S FUTURE: UBC
He spent his senior season redefining the depth and the mastery of his skills as perhaps the most versatile boys sprinter in B.C. high school history.
Yet, while Anastas Eliopoulos was one of the fleetest competitors in the 50-year history of the Subway B.C. high school track and field championships, he may also have been one of its most profound.
Amid a senior season in which he took down an entire field of elite U.S. high-schoolers in the track capital of the world (Eugene, Ore.) with one of the best age-group sprint-hurdles times on the continent, then won three gold medals at the Subway B.C. high school championship meet earlier this month in Langley, Eliopoulos secured a booty worthy of a pirate.
Yet, to him, love of the sport had nothing to do with its weighty accoutrements. Instead, his greatest take-aways were both weightless and priceless.
“Medals are just medals,” said Eliopoulos, whose potential has soared under the tutelage of coach Tatjana Mece. “They just don’t mean as much to me as achieving personal bests. Those are the things that will stick with you for the rest of your life.”
Of course, it’s a tribute to Eliopoulos that his personal-bests are each worthy of golden moments.
His 13.84-seconds performance in his specialty 110-metre hurdles gave him first place at the Oregon Relays in mid-April at historic Hayward Field on the campus of the University of Oregon in Eugene.
At the Subway B.C. high school championships earlier this month in Langley, he bettered that time with a meet-record 13.62 seconds, albeit on a lower hurdle height.
In addition, he ran anchor on the Fighting Irish’s 4x100m relay team, closing it out in 42.14 seconds in the heats to break a 22-year-old meet record, then earned the right to hoist the Percy Williams Trophy after winning the prestigious 100m final in 10.81 seconds.
“He is so grounded and that comes from his family,” says Laurier Primeau, Eliopoulos’s soon-tobe head coach next season with the UBC Thunderbirds.
“When your parents are that involved in your community and they teach by example that giving back is an important part of life, that gets infused into your personality. It’s what you see in Anastas.”
The medals are nice, but to him, it’s the mettle required to achieve personal-bests that will always be his gold standard.