Upland Country Day School fourth grader Nikolas Toocheck won first place and national honors at the USA Youth Track & Field National Championships.
EAST MARLBOROUGH — Upland Country Day School fourth grader Nikolas Toocheck recently earned first place and national honors at the USA Youth Track & Field National Championships held at Maverick Stadium at the University of Texas in Arlington, Texas.
Toocheck won first place in the Bantam Boys 1500m Race Walk with a time of 9:23:39 at the youth nationals. His winning time was the second fastest recorded in the country this year. Temperatures on the track in Arlington soared to well over 100 degrees as more than 2500 of the country’s top young athletes converged there for the competition.
The National Championships features athletes between the ages 7-18 competing in six, two-year age divisions. This year was the first year that athletes from other countries were approved for participation. In an effort to promote cultural exchange for youth athletes, four athletes from Brazil traveled to Texas for international competition.
Toocheck will be in fourth grade at Upland this year and has been competing in track this past year. Upland Country Day School has been involved in international athletics to promote youth cultural exchange for more than 35 years. Each year, the school hosts ninth grade hockey players from Finland for the entire academic year and Upland 8th and 9th graders
travel to Finland and England or Germany each Spring to compete with area youth in ice hockey and lacrosse. For more information visit the Upland website at www.uplandcds.org.
Well done! Here’s to many more successes – and maybe see you in the Olympics in the future too!