One of Ucluelet’s brightest smiles was beaming full throttle last month as the community celebrated Special Olympian Maxtin Lengyel.
Lengyel, 22, competed in the BC Summer Games Special Olympics in Maple Ridge from July 21-24 and brought home a bronze medal in the 200-metre men’s race, a silver medal in the 4 x 100-metre men’s relay race and a silver medal in the 4 x 400 metre mixed zone relay.
“I was happy as hell. It was amazing,” Lengyel told the Westerly News during an Aug. 23 grand opening block party at Westcoast Community Resources Society’s new Re-Use it Store where he was the guest of honour. “My goal was to do my best; balls to the wall.”
Lengyel was one of 15 athletes selected for the Special Olympics BC team and this was his second time competing in the event.
He said the experience was “amazing.”
“I met so many nice people and had a lot of nice help from my coaches,” he said.
He added he feels proud to represent Ucluelet and is buoyed by his community’s support.
“I love how beautiful Ucluelet and Tofino are. It’s a beautiful place and I have a lot of support from the community,” he said. “I feel very supported by my community.”
He said his mom Jacqueline Holliday has been a consistent pillar of his pursuits.
“She helps me out. It’s amazing. My mom is really supportive. Family is everything to me,” he said.
Holliday told the Westerly she enjoys seeing her son continue to work hard and make his best better.
“We’re always excited when he comes back with a shiny piece of hardware. That’s really great but, for us, what we try to support in Maxtin is seeing his improvement. It’s more about what is his personal best and seeing that the hard work he puts in and the more that he puts in, the better the outcome. ‘If it’s meant to be, it’s up to me;’ we always teach him that and the more energy that he puts in, the more energy people want to put into him,” she said.
“We’re happy that he keeps finding success because it keeps giving him incentive to continue training and trying to make Ucluelet proud…Maxtin always feels really stoked when he can accomplish something, when he can get to that next level and it always pushes him to train harder.”
Lengyel lives in Ucluelet, but trains in Port Alberni where he travels once a week to work with Special Olympics coach Mike Riddalls.
Holliday said Lengyel received vital support from the Westcoast Community Resources Society to help him travel to Port Alberni and back.
“For community members with special needs or lack of mobility, it is so important for us to have access to certain support systems we don’t have here in the community…One of the things is that Special Olympics coaching that Maxtin gets,” she said. “It is so important for them to be able to get there and, as an adult , Maxtin can’t always rely on his parents to do that, especially in the summertime…The Westcoast Community Resources Society is really trying to find ways to make it a little bit easier for Max to get there when he needs to get there.”
She said the WCCRS’ support came at a crucial time, “when it was really critical for him to be able to access coaching and be able to participate with his team.”
“That’s not necessarily something that WCCRS does or can do for everybody, but it is something that they are acknowledging is an impediment for most people to be able to access services and fun things, like recreation, that they may not be able to get here,” she said. “They are recognizing it is a need in particular for people with special needs or mobility issues to be able to get out of town to access things that we don’t have here for them.”
She added that she hopes to see work done at the track outside Ucluelet Secondary School, which has become overgrown and unusable.
“If we had that track better maintained for track and field, people could train on it, people could use it…It’s just another social, physical outlet for people to have a really healthy body, healthy mind and a positive outlet to use,” she said, adding she’d also like to see the tennis courts that were removed from the school grounds replaced.
“We need to be able to do more than just sit on a beach. Many people don’t have access to a car to drive out and go surfing, whereas picking up a tennis racket is really easy, walking to the track is really easy. It’s easy access for everybody to get there and use it.”
Special Olympics coach Mike Riddalls has been training Lengyel since 2017 and noted Lengyel has now competed in the 2018 Special Olympics National Summer Games in Nova Scotia, the 2022 BC Summer Games in Prince George and the 2024 BC Summer Games in Maple Ridge and has returned home with medals each time.
“I’m proud of him because he works hard, trains hard and does his best…He has an engaging personality, is outgoing, works hard at training and above all is a good team player. He likes to encourage fellow athletes when they are competing and get the crowd involved in cheering,” Riddalls told the Westerly.
“He’s very friendly, very outgoing, talks to everybody and he’s just fun to be with…I enjoy coaching him and look forward to watching his progress as an athlete and a person.”
