Graduating Fredericton High School student Chelsey Hall was awarded the Arthur L. Irving Family Foundation Scholarship and has set her sights on St. Thomas University’s cross-country and track and field team this fall.
Eighteen-year-old Hall has already broken 13 New Brunswick records in her cross-country and track and field career, and still holds the 1,500 metre bantam record of 4:51 minutes.
“I fully expect that Chelsey will look past setting STU school records and aspire to be in the top group of runners at UNB, Dalhousie and St. FX,” said STU’s cross-country and track and field head coach Alex Coffin. “She is already competitive based on her high school results.”
At first, Hall was not considering STU as her first university of choice because she held an interest in the sciences. But after STU’s athletics director Mike Eagles showed her the options to take sciences at UNB while attending STU, she began considering green and gold.
Coffin messaged Hall to apply for the $10,000 scholarship, and after an interview at Arthur Irving’s home in Saint John, she received it.
“It’s cool to know that someone is supporting me and following my running career,” said Hall.
“I know Chelsey is extremely proud to be the recipient of the Arthur L. Irving Family Foundation Scholarship so she wants to keep performing to the standard that helped her win that scholarship,” said Coffin.
Hall is expecting to bring a lot to the table at STU in the next few years.
“I know I’m knowledgeable about running and I would like to help other teammates that might be struggling,” she said.
“I want to try and encourage other people to join the team to create a bigger team. I would also like to break as many records as possible,” said Hall.
“I could not be more excited about Chelsey coming to St Thomas,” said Coffin. “It is a huge advantage where she has already met all of our present team.”
“She will immediately rewrite our middle distance and distance record books. Mostly though, I think that Chelsey is a great fit for the STU environment and she will excel academically here which will be her top priority,” said Coffin.
Hall has competed at the New Balance Nationals in New York City, won a one-kilometre championship race in Hawia, ran at the Boston Meet, competed in the Legion Nationals in both British Columbia and Ontario, and raced in many of the Maritime provinces.
Hall would like to one day compete at the Canada Games but while at STU, “I would like to run well at the Canadian Interuniversity Sports and Atlantic University Sports (championships) she said.”
Hall has been running seriously since she was 11. She is a middle distance runner who specializes in 600 to 1500 metre races. She has done five kilometre road races but says she is willing to shorten some of her running distances to compete in more running categories.
“I’ll probably run some 300 meters,” she said. “I like to throw in some shorter distances sometimes.”
Alex Coffin knows the benefits of recruiting Hall to the team.
“With any new top recruit, I hope they are able to showcase their training habits for the others so their new teammates are inspired to take it to the next level as well,” he said. “Chelsey in particular has been involved with track and cross country since she was very young so she has lot of experience she can share.”
Hall said she is not intimidated to compete at the university level. “I been competing with high level athletes for years now. It’s more exiting than nerve wrecking,” she said.
