“I want to compete at the Olympics, but they don’t pay very well.”

Never let it be said that Lo-Ellen Park Secondary School graduate and talented local thrower Anderson Parent is not completely grounded in his vision of exactly where he sits on the student-athlete axis.

The 18 year-old who obliterated the SDSSAA record in the discus back in May, beginning a run that culminated with a silver-bronze double medal performance at OFSAA in June recently confirmed his commitment to the University of Maryland Baltimore County Retrievers track and field program, heading State-side in just a few weeks.

Established in 1966, UMBC is a public research university situated in Catonsville (Maryland), just outside of Baltimore and roughly a 45 minute drive from Washington, D.C. It is also home to an outstanding engineering department, a key get for the young man whose scholarship is split evenly on the academic and athletic spectrum.

The truth is that as recently as the start of his grade 11 year, Parent had likely given little to no thought at all about combining what was a slightly above average involvement in sport, as a youth, with his thirst to understand the very nature of how things work.

If engineering is largely the ability to solve problems, the eldest of two boys in a family that moved to Sudbury some five years ago definitely had one to solve as he first approached the specific throwing discipline that would bring him the greatest success.

“I did a little bit of track in elementary; it was something that got me out of school,” said Parent, meandering his athletic pathway with stops for soccer, basketball and a little volleyball and football while at Lo-Ellen. “I liked doing track because it was fun, but really did not think about doing it competitively.”

“I never liked discus at first because I thought I would get motion sickness with all of the spinning.”

To the non-athletic layman, the hypothesis made sense.

Turns out that when it comes to the discus, there is a whole other spin that can be put on this event. “You really don’t spin as much as it looks,” said Parent, a member of the Air Blastoff group of athletes. “You’re really just taking three steps, basically. Once I got the technique down, I really liked it.”

That partnership between sport and athlete did take a little time to cultivate. In grade nine, Parent competed in the triple jump, javelin, shot put and 4 X 100m relay at the city championships, capturing gold in the junior boys javelin one year later and adding a silver medal in the discus.

As a first year senior, another silver in the discus was nice but a best throw of 32.81 metres at cities did little to suggest the breakthrough that was about to come. A decision to truly grasp the footwork kicked off a run that ramped up exponentially, with Parent finishing fourth at Legion Nationals in the summer of 2025, heaving the discus 48.98 metres.

“If you can perfect the footwork, it’s easy to figure everything else out. The next thing is to stay balanced in the circle – and try and have as big of an orbit as possible. The bigger the orbit, the more speed you can generate.”

From a starting point that would see Anderson Parent mimicking the spin / non-spin of the discus movement around his home without the sphere in hand came the moment that only a handful saw coming as Parent sailed the discus 58.73 metres at the Laurentian track in late May, roughly 51 feet (17 metres) further than the previous record.

When the moon and the stars all align on a magical day at the track, however, finding a way to make it happen over and over again can easily become an exercise in frustration. Though Parent continued to throw well in the aftermath – NOSSA gold = 53.45m; OFSAA silver = 55.75m), taking it to the next level may require a little patience.

“I am still dealing with that,” he said with a smile. “I will get made and then I realize that I will have another chance. If I get really made, it doesn’t end up well.”

He has touched 60 metres in practice, so improvement can certainly be projected.

Thankfully, the engineer in the athlete will help him reason this all out. It is that part of the persona of Anderson Parent that will continue to rise to the top, even as his athletic journey remains a very interesting one to follow.

“What I am really getting out of this is academics so that I can have a career,” he said.

Spoken like a teenager blessed with a wonderful perspective.