True North's 20 Under 20 List 2023: Athletes 10-6
Five more of the best young Canadian athletes are named to the list.
Welcome to part three of the 2023 True North 20 Under 20 List. The list was created to highlight twenty of the best young Canadian athletes, born on or after January 1, 2003.
Selection for the list was based on what the athlete has already achieved in their career, as well as the potential for more success in the future.
Below are athletes ten to six on the list. If you missed the first two parts, with athletes 20 to 11 on the countdown, click the links below to read them, and subscribe to be the first to read the top five on Saturday!
10) Emma Spence, Gymnastics
Kicking off the top ten on the list is artistic gymnast Emma Spence. The 20-year-old from Cambridge, Ontario was a national team standout in 2022, winning bronze medals at both the Commonwealth Games and World Championships.
Spence, competing at her first Commonwealth Games, qualified for the final of all six events, and put up strong performances in all of them. She came away with three bronze medals — one in the team all-around event, one in the individual all-around, and one in balance beam. She placed no lower than sixth in any of the finals, finishing there in the uneven bars final, and fourth in both the vault and floor events.
Later in the year, at the World Championships, Spence helped Canada win its first-ever team medal at the artistic gymnastics worlds, as they picked up the all-around bronze. Also impressive about her World Championships medal is that Spence, who came into the team to replace Shallon Olsen, had spent her morning speaking about athlete welfare at the Safeguarding Symposium hosted by the Fédération Internationale de Gymnastique (FIG).
Spence also won the bronze medal in vault at the Youth Olympic Games in 2018, and is having an incredible season with the University of Nebraska–Lincoln Cornhuskers in the NCAA Division I — setting several career highs and earning First Team All-Big Ten honors.
She was a non-traveling alternate for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, but is a hopeful for Paris 2024 next summer. The bronze medal at the World Championships qualified Canada for the competition, but the athletes that wear the maple leaf are still to be decided in the coming months.
9) Almond Small, Athletics
Canada’s potential next sprinting star announced himself at the Athletics Canada National Championships in 2022, winning four gold medals.
Ontario-based Almond Small, 19 years old at the time (now 20), won both the 100m and 200m events in the under-20 category. He also was part of the 4x100m and 4x400m teams that won gold medals at the senior level.
In a year full of achievements for the young sprinter, he also won the same four gold medals at the Athletics Ontario championships, and set the Canadian U20 200m record with a time of 20.50 seconds. He was named a co-recipient of the U20 Male Athlete of the Year by Athletics Ontario.
As Small looks to transition to the senior level and continue to put his name on the map, he could be a contender for the Olympic Games in the future, potentially as early as next summer in Paris.
8) Madeline Schizas, Figure Skating
One of the athletes who saw an opportunity and grabbed it with both hands in the Beijing 2022 Olympic cycle was figure skater Madeline Schizas. The 20-year-old from Oakville, Ontario is a three-time Canadian Figure Skating Championships medalist at the senior level already, and might have had a fourth medal as well had the 2021 edition of the competition not been cancelled because of the pandemic. She should also have an Olympic bronze medal, but more on that in a second.
Schizas won a bronze medal at the 2020 edition as a 17-year-old, finishing just a few points away from the top step of the podium despite making a handful of mistakes in the jump sections of her program. For the next two years, however, she wouldn’t finish behind another Canadian woman at a single competition, and upgraded her bronze to gold at the 2022 national championships, dominating both the short and free programs to win the gold medal by nearly 30 points.
That earned her the spot on Canada’s Olympic team heading to Beijing, where incredible performances in the both the women’s short program and free skate portions of the team competition lifted Canada all the way up into fourth place — after her teammates had underperformed and piled the pressure on the then-18-year-old.
Her pivotal scores in both the the short and free skates remain her two personal bests over a year later, and launched Canada back into medal contention when they seemed well out of it — finishing third in both categories.
It was revealed after the competition that Russian skater Kamila Valieva had tested positive for a banned performance-enhancing substance, so Schizas should have a hard-earned Olympic bronze medal to her name. The hope is that she and her teammates will officially be bumped up to third and receive it sooner rather than later.
Schizas also won gold at the 2023 Canadian Championships, and if she can continue to impress in the coming years, watch out for her again at Milano Cortina 2026 as well.
7) Florence Brunelle, Speed Skating
19-year-old short track speed skater Florence Brunelle is already a key part of the Canadian national team, and has had a ton of success at the junior level in the sport.
Brunelle, from Trois-Rivieres, Quebec, won bronze medals in the 500m and 1,000m events at the Lausanne 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games. She’s also been a standout at the World Junior Championships, winning eight medals — four gold and four silver — between 2020 and 2023.
This year in Dresden, Germany, she won gold in the 500m, and silvers in the 1,000m and 1,500m competitions.
Brunelle made her Olympic debut last year in Beijing, reaching the quarterfinals of the 500m event, the only individual event she competed in. In the 3,000m relay — competing alongside Kim Boutin, Alyson Charles, and Courtney Sarault — the team finished agonizingly close to the podium, ending up in fourth place.
She also competed in the 2,000m mixed relay with Boutin, Steven Dubois and Jordan Pierre-Gilles, finishing sixth after a disqualification in the final.
Brunelle will be a key part of Team Canada for years to come, and she has unlimited potential. Becoming one of the very best in the world in her sport certainly isn’t out of the realms of possibility.
6) Mason McTavish, Ice Hockey
Already a standout for Team Canada on the international stage, and one of the National Hockey League’s best young players, 20-year-old centre Mason McTavish has the potential to be a star for years to come.
McTavish, who split his junior hockey career between the Peterborough Petes and Hamilton Bulldogs in the Ontario Hockey League, was drafted third overall by the Anaheim Ducks in 2021. This season in the NHL — his first full year in the league after spending a lot of the 2021-22 season with Hamilton — McTavish has 40 points — 16 goals and 24 assists, in 67 games at the time of publication.
He’s been a promising bright spot on a tanking Ducks team that sits near the bottom of the Western Conference standings. It is expected that he is going to receive votes for the Calder Memorial Trophy, given to the NHL’s best rookie, as well, judging from a recent poll of members of the Professional Hockey Writers Association.
At the international level, McTavish has lit up the two major junior tournaments he’s played in. He captained Canada to a gold medal at the 2021 IIHF World U18 Championships, scoring five goals and adding six assists for eleven points in seven games.
Then, at the 2022 World Juniors, he captained Canada again, and again led them to the top of the podium. He was named the tournament MVP, after contributing eight goals and nine assists for 17 points in seven games, five more than the next-closest competitor.
In the gold medal game, it was McTavish’s heroics in overtime — swatting the puck out of midair on the goal line — that fans will remember for years to come. Some have called it the best moment in tournament history.
He could be an NHL and Team Canada standout for many years to come as he continues to get more experience under his belt, and is hopefully surrounded by other players that allow him to realise his full, elite potential.
One of those players is still to come on the True North 20 Under 20 list…
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