True North's 20 Under 20 List 2023: Top five athletes revealed
The countdown concludes with True North's top five young Canadian athletes
Welcome to the final part of the True North 20 Under 20 List, a series that has highlighted twenty of the best young Canadian athletes across a variety of sports.
If you’ve been following along with the series thus far, this is what you’ve likely been waiting for — the top five. The best of the best.
Selection for the 20 Under 20 List was based on what young Canadian athletes have already achieved thus far in their sporting careers, as well as the potential they could reach in the future. As the title of the list suggests, this list is only for athletes under the age of 20 — born on January 1, 2003 or later.
If you haven’t read the first three parts of this series yet, you can do so by clicking one of the three links below.
Part three, with athletes 10-6
Without further ado, here’s the top five athletes on the list.
5) Shaedon Sharpe, Basketball
One of the athletes on this list with the highest potential for the future might be 19-year-old basketball player Shaedon Sharpe, a shooting guard currently playing for the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers.
The London, Ontario native, drafted seventh overall by the team in the 2022 NBA Draft, has made a name for himself with elite athleticism and by seemingly playing with no fear — highlights of him making huge blocks or dunks are becoming increasingly common, and he doesn’t hesitate to take shots from three-point range either.
He is a walking highlight reel, and was supposed to take part in the dunk contest this year, but pulled out to focus on the second half of the season.
He’s mostly been limited to bench minutes in his rookie campaign, starting just five times, but Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups recently spoke highly of Sharpe, saying that he has settled more into his new NBA surrounding more as the season has progressed.
Consistency can often be the difference between good players and great ones, and it is believed by many that Sharpe can become a high-end NBA talent with a bit more experience under his belt.
He was one of the top prospects coming out of high school, and drafted by the Trail Blazers without even playing a game at the NCAA level (he committed to Kentucky, but never played for the Wildcats). He’s shown flashes of elite potential, the challenge for him now is to build on what has thus far been an impressive rookie season.
4) Simi Awujo, Soccer
At number four on the list, we have soccer player Simi Awujo, the reigning Canada Soccer Young Player of the Year. The 19-year-old, born in Atlanta but eligible to play for Canada due her mother’s Canadian citizenship, has broken into the senior Canadian women’s national team over the past few months, and looks set to play a role at the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand this summer.
After representing the United States at the youth level, Awujo made the switch to representing Canada in January of 2022, taking part in a under-20 camp. She then represented Canada at the 2022 CONCACAF Women's U-20 Championship, where they won a bronze medal, as well as the 2022 FIFA U-20 Women's World Cup, where she was a standout — playing every minute and clearly catching the eye of senior national team boss Bev Priestman.
Priestman called her up for the first time in August, where she’s been a constant presence since. She’s mostly come off the bench thus far with the senior team, but has shown flashes of being an elite midfielder. Her eye for a pass is already close to being on par with the more well-established midfielders in the team, and she has thus far displayed a versatility in midfield, able to play in an attacking role, or her seemingly more comfortable spot a little bit deeper on the pitch — where she often plays for the University of Southern California Trojans.
Awujo isn’t a locked in starter for the national team just yet, but in the coming years she absolutely has the potential to be.
3) Alexandria Loutitt, Ski Jumping
There may not be another athlete on this list that is having an impact on their sport quite like ski jumper Alexandria Loutitt.
The 19-year-old Calgarian has achieved more in the past year or so than most Canadian ski jumpers have in their entire careers. Ski jumping is not a sport that Canada has historically excelled at, but this season Loutitt has emerged as a top athlete on the circuit.
In January, she became just the second Canadian woman to reach the podium in a World Cup event, and the first to win one, taking the gold medal on the normal hill in Zaō, Japan. Teammate Abigail Strate became the third Canadian woman to reach the podium at a World Cup event two weeks later, winning bronze in Hinterzarten, Germany.
Loutitt wouldn’t be finished there, winning the large hill gold medal at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships at the start of March, the first Canadian woman to ever win a medal at worlds. She also won the gold medal on the normal hill at the 2023 Junior World Championships in Whistler, British Columbia, and has since added another silver medal on the World Cup circuit in what has undoubtedly been one of the best seasons ever by a Canadian ski jumper.
She was also part of the historic bronze medal for Canada in the inaugural mixed team event at Beijing 2022 — the first Olympic ski jumping medal ever for Canada. Competing with Mackenzie Boyd-Clowes, Abigail Strate, and Matthew Soukup, Loutitt and Canada made history, sparked a fantastic year on the circuit, and started conversations about the lack of funding that the sport has received in this country. Loutitt and her teammates aren’t competing at a high level because they have an abundance of support, they’re doing it because they’re incredibly talented athletes with a will to leave the sport in a better place than they’ve been brought into it.
Still just 19, with the career she’s had thus far and her spot as a key figure both individually and as a member of Team Canada, Alexandria Loutitt could be a name Canadian sports fans hear for years to come.
2) Connor Bedard, Ice Hockey
For a long time now, 17-year-old centre Connor Bedard has been the consensus number one overall pick in the 2023 NHL Draft.
In most years there is debate about which player will be picked first overall, but this year that isn’t the case — any time the draft is mentioned or NHL analysts share their thoughts on the draft, all of the talk is about how Bedard could be a generational talent like Connor McDavid or Sidney Crosby, and that some teams are “tanking” in order to finish lower down the standings and have a better chance at getting that first overall pick to get him.
In 2021-22 with the Regina Pats in the Western Hockey League (WHL), Bedard had 51 goals and 49 assists for 100 points in 62 games, numbers that he has absolutely blown out of the water already with a handful of games left still in the 2022-23 season. In 53 games thus far, Bedard has 66 goals and assists for 134 points already — the most of anyone in a single WHL season in the 21st century.
With Team Canada, Bedard had four goals and four assists in seven games as Canada won the gold medal at the 2022 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships, continued signs that he was on track to be the number one pick in 2023. At the 2023 edition of the tournament, Bedard had an incredible nine goals and fourteen assists in just seven games for 23 points, nine more than the next-closest player as Canada once again won the gold medal.
He’s got power behind his shot that many players could only dream of, and is a terrific skater. There’s been some chatter that whoever drafts him might move him to the wing eventually due to his size and the fact that he’s mostly played on the wing with Canada, but that remains to be seen.
Whichever team wins the NHL Draft Lottery and gets the right to pick Bedard with the first overall pick will be a very lucky franchise. Bedard has the potential to be a superstar in the league for the next 15+ years if all goes to plan, and he will be a star for Canada as well once NHL players start going to Olympics and World Championships again.
He’s one of the most anticipated sporting talents in recent memory in this country.
1) Summer McIntosh, Swimming
Taking top spot in the True North 20 Under 20 List is 16-year-old swimmer Summer McIntosh.
McIntosh, from Toronto, Ontario, was the youngest member of Team Canada at the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, where as a 14-year-old she came away without any medals, but announced herself on the international level with a couple of fourth place finishes, in the 400m freestyle and 4x200m freestyle relay. She qualified for the Olympics after doing well at the Canadian Olympic trials earlier in the year as a relatively unknown swimmer, benefitting from an extra year of training after the Olympics were postponed by a year because of the pandemic.
In 2022 she won four medals at the World Aquatics Championships, winning gold in the 200m butterfly and 400m individual medley, to go along with a silver in the 400m freestyle and a bronze in the 4x200m freestyle.
Then, at the Commonwealth Games a few weeks later, McIntosh was the star of the show, winning six medals — two of them gold, three silver and bronze, as she continued to establish herself as one of the top young swimmers on the planet, if not the vert best.
It seems as though every time she’s in the water she breaks another junior world record, or lowers one of the several she has already set, and it’s not hard to imagine her leaving the Paris 2024 Olympic Games next summer with several medals around her neck — in some ways that almost feels like the expectation.
McIntosh already holds the junior world records in the women’s 200m freestyle, 200m butterfly, 200m individual medley, and 400m individual medley. She also has the Canadian national record in the 400m freestyle, where her best time of 3:59.32 is just one second back of the great Katie Ledecky's junior record of 3:58.37.
On the True North Podcast recently, legendary Canadian swimming coach and broadcaster Byron MacDonald said that McIntosh is a “Michael Phelps-type once-in-a-generation athlete”, and said that McIntosh’s limit is “the moon”.
McIntosh could be a fixture on the Canadian Olympic Team for many years. She’ll already have swam at two Olympics by the age of 17 next summer, so it’s not impossible that McIntosh makes it to four or five Olympics as she gets older, and reaches even greater heights as she reaches the prime of her career. With that could come a whole boatload of medals — as she is already pushing some of the world’s best athletes.
It won’t be long before McIntosh is a household name in Canada. Paris 2024 could very well be Summer’s Olympics.
Thank you for all of the support on the True North 20 Under 20! Please check out parts one to three of this series if you haven’t already.
Part three, with athletes 10-6
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