Mapleton native Nathaniel Mechler set a record in the heptathlon en route to winning a championship in his first indoor NCAA Division 1 Conference Championship on Feb. 25 and 26.
Nathaniel’s parents, Colleen and Roland Mechler of Goldstone, travelled to Birmingham, Alabama to watch their son compete with the men’s team from the University of Houston, which also won the conference championship.
Roland Mechler told the Advertiser in an email he and Colleen are “very pleased” with their son’s auspicious start to his college athletic and academic career at Houston, where he began studying kinesiology on a track and field scholarship last fall.
“Most importantly … he is enjoying school and doing extremely well, and he really loves his coach,” stated Roland. “As parents you are just happy and relieved when you know your kids are doing well (especially when they are a couple thousand miles away).”
He added Nathaniel has impressed his coaches by setting a record in his freshman year.
In an email Nathaniel stated, “School has been going well and the busy schedule has been manageable. For track I have been able to adapt to the training well and I am excited to see how I do this outdoor season.”
He continued, “For me the indoor season was just a good way to see how training is going then I can make the necessary changes outdoors and hopefully break the 8,000-point total in the decathlon for the first time this year.”
Nathaniel feels the biggest difference about competing at the NCAA Division 1 level is the depth of the system.
“In Canada we have a handful of athletes who are world class in each event, but in the NCAA there are over 20 world class athletes in each event,” he said.
Technical changes are among the key elements to Nathaniel’s new training and competition regimen.
“Over the last couple years of competing in the multi-events I have picked up some bad habits in specific events, so my new coach Kyle Tellez has been working a lot with me to unlearn my bad habits and implement the new technique,” he explained.
The new techniques are already paying dividends, said Nathaniel.
“It usually takes a while to learn a new technique and often it can take over a year to see the success after changing technique, but fortunately in most of my events I have already made improvements.
“The second biggest help has been training in one location. Unfortunately in Canada there are very few places with good facilities, good weather and coaching for all the decathlon events, and at Houston I have all three in one place, so that has also helped me significantly.
Nathaniel’s next competition will be the Texas Relays, where he will compete in the decathlon on March 29 and 30. His goal there is to score high enough to qualify for the NCAA championships in June in Eugene, Oregon.
“Beyond that one of my goals is to also score 8,000 points, which is a rule of thumb that represents a world class senior decathlete,” he stated.
“If I were to accomplish this, I would be one of only a very few freshman to have ever achieved this score.”
Nathaniel first became interested in track and field as a student at Drayton Heights Public School and continued to compete while attending Elmira District Secondary School.
In 2015 he won a bronze medal at the Pan American Junior Championships in Edmonton.
