When Astrid Nyame and Adrea Propp were university track athletes, they often felt like they were training and racing in a vacuum. It was hard to get information about upcoming track meets and learn how people had done. While Saskatchewan athletes were competing at high levels provincially, nationally and internationally, that success wasn’t always being showcased.
“There are so many opportunities that are available, but people don’t necessarily know that they exist,” says Propp, who ran with the University of Regina Cougars from 2010-15.
So when Propp and Nyame were in Montreal for the Olympic trials in 2021 they decided to do something about it. Later that year they launched SaskWatch Athletics: an Instagram and Facebook account dedicated to sharing news about pertinent competitions and results from Saskatchewan athletes. The account was started anonymously and, after a year of building an engaged following (the Instagram account boasts close to 700 followers), the pair went public as SaskWatch’s co-founders last month and kicked off a podcast by the same name. One or two episodes are released each week featuring Nyame and Propp in conversation with Saskatchewan track athletes, coaches and volunteers.

“It’s just so easy to look up the results and the number that somebody ran, threw, jumped, but that’s just one part of the story,” says Nyame, who competed for the University of Saskatchewan Huskies from 2012-17. “I heard a million times when I first decided to pursue high-performance track that it’s all about the journey and the people that you meet. I think if we genuinely believe that it’s nice to actually put those stories out there so people can hear them and learn from them.”
Nyame and Propp are uniquely suited to host they podcast because of their background as high achieving Saskatchewan university athletes who left the province to train at a high level (Nyame at the ALTIS High Performance Training Centre in Arizona and Propp at the Athletics Canada West Hub in Victoria) before coming back home to continue their athletics careers. Both are still training and working full time in the province in addition to running SaskWatch.
“I feel like we’re kind of pioneers in having gotten to do the university circuit, do a high performance circuit, and now go beyond that, actually bring some of the expertise home — not as a retired athlete, but as a still active athlete,” Propp says. “It’s really nice to feel like there’s some giving back in what we’re doing in getting to highlight this community that’s here in sport that started us, that planted those seeds of love of sport for us.”

The pair have been able to find robust information for regular SaskWatch social posts over the past year because they live and breathe track and field. They know where to hunt down information and are connected to many of the province’s athletes either personally or through social media. Instagram has been a particularly prolific platform for them because of how many athletes use it.
The launch of the podcast does not mean an end to those regular social posts — rather Nyame and Propp are excited to supplement them with in-depth conversations that aim to demystify the world of university and post-university high-performance track.
“There’s so many amazing people doing amazing things that I don’t feel like we’re ever going to run out of content,” Propp says.
You can find SaskWatch on Instagram at @SaskWatchAthletics, on Facebook at facebook.com/SaskWatchAthletics and search for the SaskWatch Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.