Greater heights await Proceviat
TRACK AND FIELD: SFU student-athlete on a Burnaby Mountain high as possible Olympic pursuit begins
Cam Proceviat is the kind of middle-distance runner whose times on the track have a habit of making slow, but consistent gains.
A tenth of a second faster here, a quarter of a second there.
Taken on the whole, it’s kind of like putting pennies away for a rainy day and that’s fitting for a guy who has spent the past five years compounding his interest in athletics and academics into a what is best described as a chapter-ending thesis on the possibilities that come by dreaming big.
Last week, in front of a packed house at Simon Fraser University’s Convocation Mall, the former walkon runner from Burnaby’s Moscrop Secondary spoke to the underdog in all of us as he delivered the commencement address to his graduating class in the school’s faculty of science.
“I can’t lie and say that I wasn’t imagining any of this,” Proceviat said earlier this week, reflecting on the fact that from his neophyte beginnings in 2011 as an 800-metre runner, he has improved his stock to the point where he has a shot over the next quadrennial to represent his country at 2020 Olympic Games.
“Dreaming and imagining, though, those are different from things actually happening,” continued Proceviat, who got his spot with the Clan based on a favour between New Westminster Spartans coach Besnik Mece and SFU coach Brit Townsend.
“But to be good at anything, I feel like you have to dream. And back then, I was definitely dreaming a lot.”
Boasting a pedestrian 800-metre personal-best time of two minutes, 5.69 seconds coming out of high school, dreaming was his only logical first step.
Yet as he rose to begin his valedictory address five years later, Proceviat’s journey could be measured not only by the dramatic 17-second improvement (to a personal best of 1:49.28) he accomplished over the distance, but by the excellence that had become his standard in the classroom.
Set to delay his entrance to med school by at least a year in order to work toward the neighbourhood of the Olympic-qualifying standard of 1:46, Proceviat’s rags-to-riches run atop Burnaby Mountain has closed with honours even he was not capable of imagining.
From humble beginnings, he finished his Clan career by winning the 800 m at his conference’s indoor championships and placing second in both the 800- and 1,500-m events at its outdoor championships, garnering All-American status and earning NCAA national championship meet appearances in both. Yet that is only half the story. Over a senior season in which he was named SFU’s overall male athlete of the year, he was also selected the Great Northwest Athletic Conference’s Scholar Athlete of the Year, the latter fuelled by a 3.90 grade-point average within his dual major of molecular biology and chemistry.
“He was so raw that once we started working with him, we did see some very quick improvement,” Townsend said of the fact that Proceviat shaved 10 seconds off his personal best over his 2011-12 redshirt season before embarking on four years of gradual, but consistent improvement.
“But the most important thing Cam had was his vision. It’s not easy to get someone to look four or five years down the road because everyone wants to achieve in the moment. He was prepared to do that.”
And after years of being a studentathlete, he is now a full-time athlete instead.
Proceviat, who on Friday and Saturday competes at the Harry Jerome and Victoria International meets respectively, has given himself the next year to train and trim both his 800- and 1,500-m times.
An immediate goal? The 2017 world student games in Taipei.
“I think that is a real possibility,” said Proceviat. “I think (1:46) is a little out of reach right now. But based on training and how well it goes over the next year, I will decide if I want to go another three years after that for 2020.”
Just your run-of-the-mill story of a walk-on runner who gets his chance at a collegiate career because of a favour between coaches, then proceeds to put himself about three seconds off an Olympic standard, while at the same time forging the base of a career in medicine with crazy grades in molecular biology?
“I guess I really don’t understand what it might seem like to everybody on the outside,” the humble Proceviat said. “To me, it’s not just a story you tell in five minutes. To me, it’s been five years of steady progress.”
From slow to fast. From smart to smarter. From dream to reality.
Proceviat won’t say it, but he is the un-recruited, unheralded, unknown, underdog walk-on who has proven himself to be anything but pedestrian.