Last year, a shift in mindset both training-wise and diet-wise helped pentathlete Maddison Lawrence qualify for nationals. A naturally gifted athlete, she finished eighth overall in her first full year focusing on five different disciplines, those being shotput, high jump, 60-metre hurdles, long jump, and the 800-metre.

The trajectory for Lawrence has only gone up from there, as the third-year — fresh off of a busy summer that included Western Canada Summer Games, combined event nationals and outdoor nationals — set a new Bisons record for points in the pentathlon, with 3824 at the Golden Bear Open in January.

The tremendous feat also pushed Lawrence well past the U SPORTS auto standard of 3655 points and is the fourth best total so far this year.

"The points total should be getting better too," noted Lawrence, who notes she can be a glass half empty type of person at times.

"My 800, I don't really know what happened in that one, but I ran ten seconds under my personal best so it was a little tough, but at least it gives me the reassurance say if I don't jump as well on one of the events or maybe don't throw as far that I'll be okay. Ten seconds is a lot, that's more than 100 points, so I at least have the reassurance that the score will improve no matter what as long as I don't do that again."

Despite being her own worst critic, there's no denying that Lawrence's numbers compared to last year's nationals are absolutely spectacular.

Her shotput has gone up a full metre to 10.81, while her long jump personal best of 5.72 is just under five centimetres better. She's also shaved a tenth of a second off of her 60-metre hurdle time, while her high jump — a consistent strength — is at 1.71 metres and has automatically qualified her for nationals.

Lawrence credits her steady progression to a number of different factors, with perhaps the biggest being a shift in assistant coaching. She's still training with Mingpu Wu for throwing and high jump, but opted to go with recent Bisons grad Gee-ef Nkwonta for the rest of the disciplines.

"We created a good friendship I would say. Even in the summer at nationals, we were friends off the track as well as on the track," Lawrence says of her and Nkwonta's dynamic.

"Then in the summer he started to coach me when my coach went away, and in that time, I felt very relaxed and I felt like I understood his perspective very well. In September I spoke to him and said I'm kind of interested in switching over. I think a lot of people would've thought it was a gamble, just because last year I was successful, but I kind of had to just go with my gut and see what would happen."

The gamble has paid off for the pair, who've known each other since Lawrence was still in high school. Their long-term friendship has been critical for transparency, both on and off the track.

"He definitely started to challenge me, and it just continued to grow from there and it worked out really well. I find that one thing about our relationship as coach and athlete too that works is that we have that off the track kind of history, so I can just say what I want to say around him and not feel like it's weird. I can just be straight up and I feel like that really enhances our overall relationship."

Nkwonta's guidance has been particularly helpful when it comes to Lawrence's speed goals.

"He has taught me a lot, because last year I didn't have very much flat speed at all. This year I opened my season with a 0.28 second PB in the 60-metre, which is a lot for such a short distance. He just taught me better form starting and he always emphasizes to put my feet down, which I guess I didn't really do before.

A lot of it was just doing speed over hurdles. When we came inside from mid to late November, we didn't do a lot of hurdles, it was just flat speed and when we did do hurdles it would be one day and everything else was flat speed. Slowly we increased to two days of hurdles but we didn't cancel out the flat speed, which was definitely what I needed to improve."

Despite already being penciled in for nationals, Lawrence — a name to remember at Canada West Championships in a few weeks — still has a few long-term goals in mind as she continues on her journey to greatness.   

"Ming and I were kind of looking at the U of M high jump record. I've attempted it twice this year, but it hasn't worked out. I'm not too far off, so that would be a goal, if not this year I still have a couple of years to do it. That would be a really nice jump to see and would definitely give me confidence. Then for long jump, I kind of want to go for the U SPORTS auto standard now. I'm ten centimetres off, so there's nothing stopping me. I want to try and go for it."