Canadian long jumper Noah Vucsics ready to launch at Paralympic Games

Noah Vucsics got into trouble for jumping over garbage cans in the halls of Calgary's James Fowler High School when he was in Grade 12.

A happy offshoot of that clash with authority was the suggestion that he take his springs to the track and field team.

Vucsics, now 24, will compete for Canada in men's T20 long jump in the Paralympic Games in Paris on Saturday.

His classification is for athletes with an intellectual impairment.

Vucsics may struggle to process some information, but he speaks like a Shakespearean actor.

"Most students with intellectual disabilities don't necessarily get the opportunities to do option classes or just don't do option classes because they feel like they won't fit in, like food classes. I remember in Grade 9, drama wasn't on our high school sheet," Vucsics said.

"I'm kind of an unusual guy with an intellectual disability who loves the stage, loves public speaking, loves drama. So Grade 11, I worked hard to do a monologue and memorize my lines, like all the other regular students, and I got to be a lost boy in a Peter Pan production.

"That monologue really helped me overcome my biggest challenge, which was being the valedictorian for my graduation class."

James Fowler opened the valedictorian floor in 2018 to a broader spectrum of candidates than just those with the highest grades.

Inspired, Vucsics, who had been in special education from Grade 4 to Grade 12 for extra support in math and reading, tried for and earned the honour.

"One of my classmates said to me 'I don't feel I really deserve to walk the stage because we're not doing the regular work with the regular students.' He felt like he didn't want to graduate," Vucsis said.

"I thought 'if I can pull this off and be the valedictorian, and he can see me doing a speech in front of 700, 800 people, hopefully that can inspire him to feel like he deserves to walk the stage.'"

A test score doesn’t decide how you live your life, which is one of the messages Vucsics (pronounced voo-cheech) conveyed then and continues to share with students today.

"He has a story to tell. He's very articulate. He wants to be an advocate for people with non-visible disabilities," said his mother Carolyn.

"He just really feels that for one thing, people with disabilities are not given the opportunity to develop into who they can be."

Carolyn and Robert Vucsics adopted Noah from Haiti when he was five months old. They could hardly keep their infant son in his Exersaucer.

"We called him the jumping bean right from the get-go," Carolyn said.

Noah dabbled in track at age 10, but didn't like competing and required surgery on a meniscus tear in his knee around that time.

After the aforementioned directive to stop vaulting over garbage receptacles, he jumped over six metres at his first high school meet with little training.

When Vucsics discovered there was a T20 class in Paralympic long jump, he undertook the tedious and expensive classification process of extensive documentation and two separate trips to Dubai to meet a panel of assessors.

"It's such a complicated thing," Vucsics said. "They want to make sure everything is consistent and that no one is trying to cheat.

"Dubai is expensive. I could only go once a year. I couldn't afford to go two times in the same year, six months apart."

He was classified by February 2023, and approached coaches Jane Kolodnicki and James Holder.

"I had seen him around. I noticed right away how much natural talent he had for the jumps. He's just light and bouncy and springy and everything a jumps coach is looking for," Kolodnicki said. "He always had a real natural takeoff. We worked really on the basics of the runway, how many running strides to the board, posture at takeoff and his landing.

"But he made an impression on us with his determination and charisma. The way he presented himself to us was quite something. He looked at us right in the eye and said 'I want to go to the Paralympic Games.'"

Vucsics met that target with a silver medal in the 2023 world para athletics championships in Paris.

He posted 7.35 metres behind Malaysia's Abdul Latif Romly's 7.4.

Romly is the two-time defending Paralympic champion and holds the world record of 7.64.

Without peaking and at the end of a hard training block, Vucsics took bronze at the Parapan American Games in Santiago, Chile.

"I sent him for a Games experience. I wasn't looking for top performance," Kolodnicki said. "I was looking for Noah to have the experience of living in an athletes' village, having to deal with transportation and being in a multi-sport Games.

"The performance was really secondary but because he loves to compete, he wanted to come home with some hardware."

Vucsics wants more of that in his Paralympic debut and to make history as the first Canadian to reach the podium in T20 long jump.

"I want to shoot for the stars," he said. "We're all human and anything can happen. I have to believe I can beat this guy. If I can put together some things technically going into that 7.40, 7.50 range, it's possible.

"If I can do that at the Games and Jane gets me to peak when it matters, I could potentially win at the Paralympic Games, but my definite goal is to try and contend for another medal."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 5, 2024.

Donna Spencer, The Canadian Press