US college-bound Blackwood breaks new ground for Sydney Pagon

ISSA Girls’ Athletics Championships (Champs) medallist Annataseca Blackwood created history for Sydney Pagon High when she left the island for New Mexico Junior College in the United States.

She is the first student from the St Elizabeth-based school to earn a track and field scholarship to a US college.

Blackwood’s travel — her second-ever time on an airplane — was an exhausting trip across to the south-western region of the United States to Hobbs, New Mexico, mirroring the last three years of defying the odds and forging a new path for herself.