For 13 years, Canyon High track and field has hosted a relatively typical invitational meet.
This year, the meet, which starts today at 8:30 a.m., will be a little different. The name has been changed to the Trevor Habberstad Invitational in honor of the 2007 Canyon grad and track alum who died of gastric cancer on Feb. 19. He was 27.
To Cowboys coach Paul Broneer, the decision to honor Habberstad was easy.
“Dave (Habberstad’s father) and I thought this would be an appropriate thing to do,” Broneer said. “Aside from the fact he was a good athlete, he’s one of the few kids that came back.”
While at Canyon, Habberstad broke records in decathlon, 110-meter hurdles and 300 hurdles and competed at the 2007 CIF state meet in the 300 hurdles. He went on to college to compete in the decathlon for Washington State.
After graduation, he joined the International Stuntman’s Association and worked on 54 different movies and television shows including American Sniper, Ant-Man, Iron Man 3, The Wolf of Wall Street, and the X-Men series.
Habberstad was a faithful alum of the Canyon track and field program, donating as much as $500 at once to the Cowboys’ annual invitational meet.
Canyon track also has plans to start a scholarship in Habberstad’s honor.
“We’re going to name this award the ‘Iron Man’ award because one thing Trevor was famous for was that he was the stunt actor who did all the fight scenes in the movie ‘Iron Man,’” said Broneer.
“We’re going to give it to a kid who was like Trevor who is kind of an iron man that does anything we ask him to do.”
Twenty-one schools will be participating in today’s meet, including Canyon, Hart, Valencia and Trinity Classical Academy. Admission is $5 for adults and $3 for students. Children under 12 are admitted for free.
