Aria MacLary recently came home from the Ontario Summer Games with gold and bronze medals
When Aria MacLary competed at the Ontario Summer Games earlier this month, she was simply hoping to make the podium.
But the 13-year-old track athlete ended up coming home with gold after finishing first in the U14 300 metre race – on top of picking up bronze in the team medley relay race.
“It felt really good because I worked so hard over the past couple months to prepare,” she told SooToday.
“I was just going in there hoping to medal.”
After months of training every week, Aria was one of 4,200 youth athletes who travelled to the Waterloo Region to participate in the four-day event, and her success on the provincial stage is just the latest in what’s become a promising track and field career.
On top of numerous podium finishes, she holds the Algoma District School Board junior girls record in the 100 metre dash, which she set in 2024, and she broke the intermediate girls 100 metre dash record earlier this year with a time of 13:19.
In team events, she also holds the school board record for the 4×100 metre relay in the junior and intermediate categories – the latter of which previously stood unchallenged for 23 years before Aria and her team broke it this year.
According to her mother, Heather, Aria has loved racing since she was a toddler – and she quickly realized that her daughter’s talent and drive was something special.
“It’s insane. In daycare, she used to line the other kids up and race them when she was like three years old,” she said.
“I think it’s incredible to watch that journey and to see her flourish. The hard work paid off, right?”
That’s without mentioning the multiple records she holds through the Royal Canadian Legion District H track meets.
With this year’s track season now behind her, Aria hopes she can break her personal bests in the 400 and 100 metre races in the coming year.
It’s her favourite part about track and field – competing against herself and looking to improve upon what she’s done.
While she also plays competitive soccer, track and field allows her to directly challenge herself in a different way.
“Just setting goals and working towards beating them and achieving them,” she said.
“I just like being able to have that for myself.”
Further down the road, she hopes to take her career to the highest collegiate levels.
“I want to become a D1 athlete somewhere in the states and compete in like the 400 and the 200 (metre races),” she said.
For now, Aria is part of the Sudbury-based Airblastoff Lions team, where she’s coached by Olympic gold medallist Robert Esmie.
As Sault Ste. Marie doesn’t have a rubber track – needed for breaking in spikes, or using starting blocks – she’s often on the road with her family to give her the best opportunities to grow.
“What we’ll do is a lot of video chatting, or he’ll send us things, and then we get down there whenever we can, and we use the facility over at LSSU (Lake Superior State University) because they have an indoor track during the winter,” Heather said.