The Lead Leg: How Kailer Jenney Put Academics First and Chose Western

Kailer Jenney, who goes by Kai, is a few weeks into his first year at Western University. He is studying engineering with an Advanced Entry Opportunity (AEO) to the Ivey Business School, he holds a President's Entrance Scholarship, and he is training with the hurdles group of a Mustangs program that has won the last two U SPORTS men's team titles. To get there, he ran a recruiting search across two countries and ended up at the same track where his club trains.

I worked with Kai in a series of advising sessions over a period of about a year and a half. While Kai had great times on the track as a high schooler, what stood out most to me during our time together were two things he did differently from the majority of recruits: (1) he took his academics extremely seriously and (2) he analyzed his options deeply in accordance with the four buckets of recruiting.

Kai is a hurdler out of London, Ontario. He took bronze in the 400m hurdles at OFSAA in grade 11 (2025) and carried a 97.5% academic average into his final year of high school. When I met Kai, he was set on studying engineering, something he was not willing to trade for a track opportunity.

While the outcome at the end of a recruitment process is always a milestone to celebrate, Kai's approach is what makes his story worth sharing here on the Streamline Athletes blog. Recruiting content tends to focus almost entirely on athletic performance, which makes sense because fast times, big jumps, and far throws get coaches to open your email. The truth, however, is that the recruiting process goes way beyond your best official meet result and into areas that are harder for folks to cover in quick Reddit replies or with a standards calculator.

[If you're interested in learning more about how college track and field coaches analyze recruits past the first impression made by their athletic résumé, check out this article → What a D2 Head Coach Looks For in a Track and Field Recruit: Insight from Coach Taylor Cudequest at PennWest Edinboro.]

In Kai's case, his times started every conversation he had. His family's budget set the boundary around those conversations. His transcript, and his focus on what he'd like to accomplish with his future transcript, decided where he ended up.

Kai on the track and in the classroom

• 60m hurdles: 8.16 (39"/99.1cm) [2026]
• 110m hurdles: 13.94 (36"/91.4cm) [2026] and 14.36 (39"/99.1cm) [2026]
• 400m: 49.57 [2026]
• 400m hurdles: 54.07 [2025]
• Academics: 97.5% average heading into grade 12
• Scholarship: President's Entrance Scholarship through Western's National Scholarship Program

Why two 110m hurdles times? Canadian high school hurdlers race over lower barriers than the ones university coaches recruit for, and Kai had to sell a 36-inch time to coaches who needed to see him over 42. During his recruiting window, his best times were 14.19 over 36 inches and 14.82 over 39. We broke down every hurdle height from Canadian high school to the NCAA and U SPORTS, and what it means for your recruitment.

How he got here

Kai did not grow up planning to be a hurdler.

"COVID put a hold on hockey, but my Mom wanted me to stay active. I joined the London Legion Track and Field Club. From there, track grew on me, and later I decided to step back from AAA hockey to focus on high school sports and my hurdling."

He played AAA hockey for the London Junior Knights and balanced it with track until 2025, when he chose to focus on the hurdles full time. That was not the only thing on his plate. At 6'4", Kai also played volleyball and varsity hockey for Medway High School, served as president of its Student Athletic Association, sat on student council, and volunteered with the Coldest Night of the Year, the London Food Bank, and a children's toy drive. In whatever time was left, he was restoring a 1987 speed boat, engine to hull, and teaching himself piano, guitar, and 3D design software.

That list says a lot about the engineer. It also explains the student-athlete Western's coaches saw.

Why Western

Kai committed to and signed with Western, where he now competes for head coach Caroline Ehrhardt and hurdles coach Harry Stantsos. His President's Entrance Scholarship is an academic award that will make a meaningful difference to his family over the course of his degree.

Reflecting on his decision to become a Western Mustang, Kai described some of the key factors:

"The distance [from home], the academic programs available to me with Engineering and Ivey, and the opportunity to compete at a high level were all very important factors."

The coaching relationship was not an unknown for him.

"Harry and Caroline are both very approachable, kind, and compassionate, while being extremely committed to bettering their athletes. My club trained at the same track as Western, so I was able to see them in action and really liked their coaching style and the support they gave their athletes. Harry is also very knowledgeable about hurdling, and we know exactly what I need to work on."

Western sees the same fit from their side. Here is head coach Caroline Ehrhardt:

"What stood out about Kailer for us is his commitment to excellence across all domains. This is exactly the type of student-athlete we hope for on our team. On top of his athletic accomplishments, he is an incredible student and will be receiving the prestigious National Scholarship. Immediately upon meeting Kailer, I got the sense that he was a big team guy and will be a huge contributor for our team beyond what he is doing on the track. This holds just as much merit to us than what he is capable of results wise. We are always thrilled to retain local talent, and can't wait to see what Kailer can do on and off the track during his time in Purple."

On why Canadian athletes should consider a U SPORTS program, Ehrhardt added:

"As indicated by our success over the past few years, we are definitely a high-performing team that is hungry and determined to be one of the top programs in the nation. But the overall development piece is what is most important to us here at Western. We want to develop confident, resilient leaders and team players who will be ready for whatever life after sport looks like for them. I am so proud of the purpose-rich environment that we offer our student-athletes and what this culture and experience pulls out of them. We are big on who our student-athletes become, not just what our student-athletes achieve. It is this transformative experience that I believe really sets us apart."

The results back her up. Western swept the men's and women's U SPORTS team titles in 2025, and the men repeated as national champions in 2026, earning Ehrhardt the Bob Boucher Award as the top U SPORTS men's coach of the year. The articles below cover both seasons:

What the American side of recruiting taught Kai

Opening up his post-secondary search, Kai cast a wide net across two countries. He spoke with American programs in multiple divisions and with U SPORTS programs at home in Canada, and he measured every one of them against the same four buckets. The two sides of that search behaved very differently.

On the American side, the men's hurdles are deep and the roster math has tightened. Roster limits and scholarship structure changed under the House settlement, and some of the doors on that side closed for reasons that had nothing to do with how fast Kai was. One program told me in November that it was not recruiting anyone for 2026 because its athletic department had capped the roster, and the coach was frustrated about it, because Kai was exactly the kind of recruit he would have wanted. Kai noticed the same pattern from his end.

"The US is highly competitive beyond Canadian standings. Being one of the top athletes in a province or even Canada doesn't necessarily mean you'll get offers, especially with the amount of talent in the States. It also surprised me how schools look at transfers from other universities through the transfer portal, not just first-year athletes."

He is right about the portal, and he is right about the rest of it. In June, I wrote an opinion piece for Athletics Illustrated called NCAA recruiting has been uprooted, and nobody told the families. The argument is that five years of rule changes, from NIL to the transfer portal to the House settlement, have handed the burden of understanding college recruiting to sixteen-year-olds and their parents. Canadians are playing a different game entirely, because to an American school they are international students who cost more than an in-state recruit, measured against more than a million American high school track athletes.

If you're curious about the NCAA's recent rule changes and how they've impacted track and field and cross country, the full explainer is here. It goes through each major change from 2021 through 2026.

Kai also carried a problem into those conversations that is specific to his event. Ontario high school hurdlers race the 110m hurdles over 36-inch barriers, university men race over 42, and one Division II coach told Kai's family outright that he could not even look at a 36-inch result. His 400m hurdles, already run at the university height, did most of the work instead, alongside his open 400m, his 60m hurdles, and his willingness to run relay legs. That versatility is the one big tip I give any high schooler who wants to be recruited, and the height problem is common enough that we gave it its own article on hurdle heights and how Canadian hurdlers should present their times to college coaches.

The family set a number early

The other thing Kai and his family did that most families do not is set a number early and say it out loud.

That number is where the two countries split. A non-resident at a US public university pays an average of $31,880 USD a year in tuition and fees before housing, food, or a flight home, and a Canadian is a non-resident everywhere. Kai had American coaches who wanted him on their roster. The scholarship math at those schools still could not get close to a domestic Ontario tuition bill. Carmyn James, Athletics Canada's NCAA Athlete Performance Advisor, made the point for me in the Athletics Illustrated piece that the exchange rate belongs in that math too. Kai's family had done it before anyone offered them anything.

The largest award Kai received in Canada had nothing to do with track. It was academic. In the US, athletic money in our sport is equivalency-based or budget-bound at most programs. This means that despite the "unlimited scholarship spending" now permitted by the NCAA, D1 coaches usually have a finite scholarship budget to split across a portion of their roster, while D2 coaches are capped by the NCAA at 12.6 full scholarships. On top of that, in most cases, Canadian students are subject to international tuition rates, so the scholarship funding they need compared to their in-state American counterparts is typically greater. Kai's times started conversations in both countries and could have earned him a spot in the US. His academic transcript is what made the biggest financial difference for his family and made Western stand above every other opportunity in front of him.

His grades were never a backup plan. His degree and career were the core we built his recruitment plan around from the start.

Here's Kai on his academic focus:

"I knew from the beginning that my grades needed to be high to even have the option to excel and get through such a hard program. At Western, I also really liked that they do an interview to get to know their candidates beyond just their grades, which I think is an important aspect of Engineering."

In hurdling, the lead leg goes over the barrier first and sets up everything that follows. Kai led with his academics from our first session, and his times followed them over. You need both, and he had both.

Kai's academics are the reason he had a decision to make at all. Academics is the first of the four buckets we work through with every athlete, and Kai is the clearest proof I have of why it sits in that position.

If your family is working out when to bring your own number into a conversation with a coach, here is how I advise athletes to handle the scholarship conversation, with input from two NCAA Division II head coaches.

The timeline was long on purpose

Kai committed to Western at the end of April of his senior year, which is later than most recruits. He afforded himself a longer timeline because of how he approached his process rather than a lack of direction. He stayed open to U SPORTS programs instead of limiting himself to American schools, which kept live options in front of him into the spring. He responded to coaches and to me quickly at every stage, and he submitted his university applications on time. His academics also put him in contention for an award significant enough that the coaches recruiting him understood why he needed an answer on it before he could give them one.

The proactive piece is the part I would underline for any family reading this. Kai built a target list and went to programs himself rather than hoping the right coach would come across his results. He first sat down with me in November of grade 11, and the plan from that meeting had two lines at the top: get the best average you can, and make your grade 11 season count, because those are the times coaches will recruit you on. He did both. Every extra month he had in the spring existed because of work he had done a year earlier.

It was not a straight line. Kai explored American options, took visits in Canada, and had other offers to weigh. By late March he had a shortlist of three. We scored them together on academics, athletics, finances, and location, and Western came out on top on the strength of the academic column.

What Kai would tell a younger athlete

I asked him what he would say to a 15- or 16-year-old who thinks recruiting is only about personal bests.

"Recruiting is highly based on PBs, but that is not the only aspect that coaches consider. The times start the conversation, but beyond that, there is a lot of chatting and getting to know each other before making a decision based on coaching style, the team, your work ethic, and overall fit."

That is a more accurate description of how this works than most of what gets written about recruiting, and it came from someone who finished the process this spring.

Year one

Before his first term started, I asked Kai what he was looking forward to at Western.

"I'm most excited for the integrated training program of on-track training and lifting. In the classroom, I'm excited for the dynamic learning environment and the connections I'll make with classmates and professors that I can build on throughout the upcoming years."

"I look forward to contributing to the team goal of qualifying for and winning the U SPORTS title. I thrive in competitive situations and know that the hurdle squad will push me to succeed in my training and competition. Building relationships and being a supportive teammate will continue to be a priority for me. I hope to continue with club track in the off season and look to better my hurdle races and maintain my Canadian ranking. I am open to exploring new events and opportunities that arise through my continued participation in Track and Field."

A personal note from Kai's recruitment advisor

Working with Kai over a year and a half, the thing that stood out was how little chasing I had to do. He answered emails, he did the work between calls, and he asked questions that told me he had already thought about the answer he was going to get. Coaches noticed the same thing, and Caroline's read on him matches mine exactly.

I ended the Athletics Illustrated article with something I tell most of the recruits I work with. There will be a day in your second winter when the holidays are over, the campus is frozen, the course you need for your degree is beating you up, and your hamstring is sore. That day arrives for every student-athlete at every school in every division. The ones who get through it did the homework first. They know why they chose what they chose, and they can sit on that bad day and say it is because school is hard and track is hard, not because they picked the wrong place. Kai did the homework. He will have that day in London like everyone does, and he will know exactly why he is there.

Congratulations, Kai. Western got a determined, dedicated, and talented athlete who will make their program better, a student who would have been an asset at any school, and most importantly, a person who, even in our limited time working together, has shown he's striving to be the best version of himself while lifting up those around him.

Kai's mom, Karen, left us a review after the process wrapped up:

To future track and field recruits and their families

We'd love to help you navigate your recruitment journey, too.

I offer 1:1 recruitment advising sessions based around the four buckets of recruitment: academics, athletics, financials, and location. You'll come with questions and leave with a personalized plan complete with recommended schools to contact using Streamline Athletes.

• Canadian athletes: book your advising session here and use promo code BM10 for 10% off your session.
• U.S. and international athletes: book your advising session here and use promo code BM10 for 10% off your session.

Additionally, we have a ton of free resources to help you get started:

• Create your free Streamline Athletes account and complete your profile to be contacted by college coaches.
• Hurdlers: learn how Canadian hurdle heights compare to the NCAA and U SPORTS, and how to present your times.
• Learn how to build your college track and field target list.
• Learn when to ask college coaches about scholarships.
• Read why you should consider a U SPORTS program.