By Madison Butkus
Hometown Weekly Reporter
Eleven-year-old Walpole native Aaliyah Grinion recently competed in her first-ever AAU Junior Olympics in Greensboro, North Carolina. Going head-to-head against hundreds of athletes, Grinion brought home four medals and set multiple personal records.
To prepare for these Junior Olympics, Grinion has been practicing extremely hard with her team, the MetroCobras TC. “Last year was my first time participating in track,” Grinion explained, “and I ended up joining the Cobras back in December of last year. My team is really fun and we practice really hard. Tuesday and Thursdays we would have practice for an hour for the younger kids and the second hour is for the older kids. I would stay for both practices so I could really put in the hard work. We are just overall really serious about track.”
With this being her very first AAU Junior Olympics, Grinion definitely had some nerves going into the races. “I was very nervous to be there,” she stated, “but I did really well because I knew I had to get a good night's rest and everything like that. Going in I was the most nervous because I knew there were fifty something girls I was going against so I knew I had to stay calm.”
Before starting each of her races, Grinion had some rituals she went through that additionally helped keep her nerves at bay. “When I get up to the starting line,” she discussed, “I always do some high knees, I jump a little bit, shake off my legs and arms. I also think to myself that I am about to run and try to put myself into that state of mind.”
Channeling her focus and determination to win, Grinion went on to secure first place in the Pentathlon (gold), second place in the 80 meter hurdles and long jump (silver) and eighth place in the high jump (bronze). Within these races, she also hit some amazing PR’s as well. “I had a couple of PR’s,” Grinion detailed, “in the 80 meter hurdles and in the 800 meter dash. For the 80 meter hurdles I had a PR of 13.33 and that was a huge PR for me. My original PR for this event was a 13.8 so with this I knew it was some hard competition but I ran my absolute hardest out there. I am really proud of myself for that.”
Her love of track, combined with her recent Junior Olympic winnings, has Grinion excited about her track career in the future. “This is something I most definitely want to continue,” she exclaimed, “for the rest of my life. In high school, in college, everything like that I would just love to do track and field. It is by far my favorite sport.”
On behalf of Hometown Weekly Newspaper, we would like to congratulate Aaliyah Grinion on her astounding success at this year's AAU Junior Olympics.
