Bianca Hiltz during a recent track meet. (Photo submitted by Bianca Hiltz
SOUTHWICK- A local teenager will be taking the trip of a lifetime this summer to the Down Under Sports Tournament on Australia’s Gold Coast. Bianca Hiltz, a 17-year-old recent graduate of Southwick High School, was selected to represent the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the track and field competitions in the international tournament.
Hiltz will be going into this competition on July 7 with a lifetime of athletics at her belt. From the time she was young, Hiltz was into dance, gymnastics, soccer, and competitive cheerleading. Her track and field career, however, only began three years ago. The sport in which she will compete on an international stage is a far cry from the activities she had taken part in growing up.
“Track was kind of out there. I wanted to do it in eighth grade, because when I went to school in Canada they had this program for kids who want to start running, but I didn’t go to it because my friends didn’t want to do it with me,” said Hiltz, “So I waited so long and then sophomore year I started indoor track and I really liked it.”
Hiltz first started with the 100-meter sprints in her first year of track. In just a couple of years, she had moved on to hurdles and the triple jump, as well as normal sprints and relays. Although she will be competing against others from around the country and the world for the first time, Hiltz is already used to competition. Her average week could consist of two or three track meets.
Bianca doing hurdles at a meet at Fitchburg State University. (Photo submitted)
When Hiltz runs any sort of track event, her scores and times are put in a database with other athletes. For example, in a meet in January at Smith College, Hiltz came in fifth place out of 45 girls with a time of 45.2 seconds in the indoor 300-meter sprint, a personal record of hers. It was through that database that Down Under Sports found Hiltz and invited her to represent Massachusetts in the tournament. She will be competing against representatives from each other state in the union for her track events. One boy and one girl were selected from each state.
“I think it was in late January when they sent me a letter asking me to represent the State of Massachusetts,” said Hiltz, “They have a list of who they want and if I don’t reply back to them in a certain amount of time they move on to the next person.”
There was no need to move on to the next person, Hiltz was the first person they asked to represent Massachusetts in the girls track events.
Hiltz has had some travel experience before –she went to school in Canada and has visited the Bahamas. This tournament, however, will bring her further from home than she has ever been, practically on the opposite side of the globe. She will not be traveling with her family or coach, she will be on her own. Her journey will begin as she departs from Bradley International Airport. From there, she will get on a flight in Los Angeles which will bring her to Queensland, Australia.
Aside from the tournament itself, Hiltz will have the opportunity to explore a bit of the area. For the first few days of being in the country, she will participate in scheduled tours of landmarks such as the Great Barrier Reef. Then, Hiltz and her fellow athletes will have the opportunity to practice with coaches before the meet, which takes place over the last three days of the two-week trip.
Although the trip and the Down Under Sports Tournament is in just under a month, Hiltz is already planning for the future afterwards. She has been recruited to attend Queens College in New York, where she plans to study premed with a focus on biology, as well as a minor in Spanish. Her goals following college include becoming a plastic surgeon, although not the kind one would immediately picture.
“I want to go over to Africa and help out little kids with tumors,” said Hiltz, “I don’t want to do the ‘Kylie Jenner’ kind of plastic surgery.”
Although she is prepared to leave, there are some things she still needs to take care of. In order to pay for the trip, each athlete must go around fundraising. Bianca needs $4,500 to complete her goal, and she said she still has a long way to go. In order to reach that number, contestants are given a form to distribute to ask for donations. In addition, Bianca has taken to seling t-shirts in order to reach her goal.
