A small but mighty crew of Yukon paddlers faced big whitewater at the canoe slalom national championships in Quebec last weekend.

Leading the charge was junior canoeist, Pelly Vincent-Braun. The 17-year-old junior national team member pulled off two podium appearances in the slalom race, placing second in C1 and first in C2 with fellow Yukoner, Mael Pronovost.

Vincent-Braun spent the week leading up to the race training with national team kayaker, Ben Hayward on the big whitewater of the Rivière Aux Sables in Jonquière, Que., a town north of Quebec City near the St. Lawrence River.

While the two athletes compete in different classes (Hayward is an internationally ranked senior kayaker, while Vincent-Braun is a canoeist), the young Yukoner said he learned how to paddle more controlled and better lines from Hayward.

“He taught me to be a bit better in the ups,” said Vincent-Braun, who just got home last night. “I wasn’t going hell-bent, but I had a clean run, which I was quite happy about.”

In canoe slalom, athletes are penalized if they touch any of the hanging gates, which they must navigate in order, with any part of their boat, paddle, or person. They are also penalized if they miss gates. A clean run is when an athlete navigates the course without touching or missing any of the about 20 gates.

No two courses are the same and athletes don’t get to have any training runs once a course has been set. They rely on their training on the river beforehand and the time they spend with their coach walking the course ahead of the race.

It was during this time with her coach that Luanda Pronovost decided on her race plan. She and her coach opted for her to stay on the right-hand side of the river, missing all the upstream gates on the left so that she wouldn’t have to ferry across the current and risk flipping in the big, pushy water.

“I did 14 gates out of 21 in my best run, so I did miss a lot of gates because I didn’t want to flip,” said the 12-year old, who races in cadet K1W.

Her race plan was almost bombproof. She flipped on her second run. “But I rolled back up really fast in an eddy,” she said.

Pronovost’s runs were good enough for second place and she stood on the podium with Alberta’s Gemma Grochmal, who missed fewer gates on the course to win.

It was Pronovost’s first time racing slalom at nationals, and while she doesn’t have immediate plans to train in the sport, she said she would like to keep competing at nationals.

“I didn’t think it’d be that fun,” she said by phone from Quebec. She said she’d love other Yukon girls to start kayaking as well.

Her older brother, Mael, also competed in the slalom race, bagging runs in all three events. Mael, who is primarily a kayaker, started training C1 this summer. He surprised himself by finishing fourth in the junior C1 race. Then, in the most competitive category, junior K1, which had 22 athletes, Mael finished 11th.

“It went really well. It felt really smooth,” said the Yukoner, who hopes to make the junior national team in the future. “I got a clean run and it was my first one ever.”

Mael and Vincent-Braun also teamed up for the junior C2 race. They paddled a borrowed boat, which leaked from a large duct-taped hole near the bow and had to use the straps from their C1s to buckle themselves in.

With the best of two runs counting, the boys used their first run, touching only three gates on the course and finishing almost 100 seconds ahead of Ontario rivals, Keenan Simpson and Ben Risk.

“We felt pretty good about it,” said Vincent-Braun.

They also paddled in the finals on Sunday, on a new course with open age-group categories.

They swam; all the C2s did. A double upstream got the better of them and each time they tried to roll up, they were smacked back down by a wave.

Despite the rocky Sunday performance, the duo is happy with their gold medal from the day before and with the season now over, they’re looking forward to spending more time on the river next year.