Local and young athlete is on the rise

Cassidy Bosman from Kempton Park is a young sportswoman on the rise.

She has qualified to represent Central Gauteng Athletics in the ASA Cross-Country Championships in Gqeberha in September.

“I feel excited. I feel calm right now but on the day I’m going to stress,” she said.

The 15-year-old athlete fell in love with athletics in Grade Four and has been an athlete ever since.

Cassidy is a cross-country and track runner.

“I run 4km in cross-country and then I run 800m, 1 500m and 3 000m on track,” she said.

As young as she is, Cassidy has managed to balance her practice schedule and school.

“We train in the morning before school, then after school, we also train,” she said.

She added that she gets a lot of support from her family which makes juggling everything easier.

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Cassidy said that the preparations are going very well and she’s aiming for a top-six finish.

On August 23, Cassidy participated in the District Championships held at Curro Serengeti.

She won a gold medal in her race and will be heading to the Gauteng Schools Championships this coming weekend.

She also won the best senior girls athlete of the season award.

Cassidy is under the guidance of her coach Michael van Aswegen.

Michael is the middle-distance and long-distance coach at Hoërskool Kempton Park.

He has been an athletics coach for 12 years and has been coaching at Hoërskool Kempton Park since November 2022.

“There are several athletes at the school that show potential, but Cassidy has improved in leaps and bounds in just the last eight months that I’ve been coaching her,” he said.

Michael added that Cassidy improved from 10th in the province last year to second this year and is looking at being part of the top six at the ASA Championship in Gqeberha.

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“Her chances are good if you look in comparison to the girls that she ran against last year that she’s now beating.

Those girls were all in the top eight at the ASA’s last year so she has a shot.

“Anything can happen on the day but put yourself in the right position and you’ll find yourself in the medals,” said Michael.

He added that in terms of the preparations, they haven’t had enough time to reach the right peak.

“We still have a few provincial races to get through and then they’ll be ready for the ASA championship.”