North Cook News

As a middle school student in Mount Prospect, David Kendziera made a huge decision: he wanted to pursue a dream of competing at the Summer Olympics.

A young Kendziera pictured himself as one of the athletes representing the U.S.A. while watching the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics in 2008.

“I was awestruck, and I thought it was super cool,” Kendziera told The Daily Illini, the independent student publication of his alma mater. “Just opening ceremonies, especially, then seeing all the athletes walk out. So that kind of sparked my interest, like one day, you know, I totally want to be an Olympian like this seems so cool. And then, kind of over the years, it began to evolve.”

Since that summer, Kendziera set out to achieve his goal, competing at every level from the sixth grade to his time matriculating at Illinois.

Fast forward to the moment he qualified for the Tokyo Games last month, a year after the COVID-19 pandemic postponed his attempt to redeem himself after falling short of a ticket to Rio De Janeiro four years before.

A personal best time in the 400-meter hurdles of 48.38 seconds that earned Kendziera a third-place finish at the 2021 Olympic Trials in Oregon was good enough to qualify for Team U.S.A. in Japan.

"All of the sudden I just got struck by this, what did I just do? Did I actually do this?" ABC7 Chicago reported the athlete as saying. "Now, it's become so surreal. I don't even really know how to accept it. It's definitely been an emotional roller coaster. 'Ok, yeah, you are an Olympian. You're going to make this team,' and then it was like, 'Oh my God, I did it!'"

Kendziera finished 12th in the 400-meter hurdles, but his one regret about the Olympics was not being able to compete in front of his family and friends given the ban on spectators, the Chicago Tribune reported.