Hanna Sobkowich almost didn’t come to UBC. Now she’s leaving it as a school record holder, a researcher, and a student who says she’d do it all over again.
When Hanna Sobkowich graduated from high school in White Rock, going to UBC was the last thing on her mind.
“I didn’t want to go local,” she says. “I was determined not to.”
Then a phone call changed everything. A high school friend’s grandfather — a former UBC head coach — put her name forward to the current track and field program. The coach reached out, offered her a walk-on spot, and Sobkowich, who had only started taking sprinting seriously in Grade 12, made a snap decision.
“I was like, okay, cool. I guess I’m going to go to UBC.”
Now in her fifth year, Sobkowich is finishing an honours thesis in the Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship, working as a lab technician in a research lab, and preparing to graduate as the school record holder in the 100, 200, and 400 metres — a sweep she completed in a single conference meet last spring.
“This is more than I could have ever asked for,” she says.
An unlikely path to forestry
Sobkowich arrived at UBC knowing she liked science, but not what kind. A high school counsellor pointed her toward Forest Sciences, and she applied almost on a whim.
“I was like, okay, cool. Applied. Got in early. And that was kind of that.”
Her first year was a blur of large chemistry and math lectures, far from the tight-knit forestry community she’d eventually call home. A soil science course offered a glimpse — “I was like, okay, this is interesting” — but the real turning point came in second year, when she entered the smaller world of the Faculty.
“You can just tell that the professors love their students and love what they do. I’ve been here for five years and I’ve only ever had great professor experiences. I feel like that’s a win.”
The making of a record-breaker
Track was never the plan. Sobkowich played soccer and softball in high school and only started sprinting competitively in Grade 12. She joined the team with cautious optimism and spent her first year not competing at all. A trip to California for warm-weather meets shifted something.
“I was like, oh, I want to do this. I want to be good at this.”
By second year she was running personal bests at nearly every race. Her fourth year brought a full-circle moment: at conference, in two days, she broke the school record in the 400, then the 200, then took second in the 100 while setting another program record.
The journey wasn’t without darkness. In third year, after the sudden loss of a teammate to suicide, her performances fell apart. She made nationals but placed seventeenth in events she’d finished fourth in the year before.
“I blamed myself. Like, I’m just not meant to do this.”
She came back her fourth year still carrying that weight — until anchoring the four-by-one relay at conference, when everything clicked.
“We broke the conference record, broke the school record. Something good already happened in my senior year, and it took the pressure off.”
Sobkowich is now out of eligibility but still training, competing unattached while chasing the standard to represent BC at the Canadian national championships. She was part of Team BC at the Canada Summer Games last summer, winning gold in the four-by-one. Olympic ambitions remain, though she’s clear-eyed about the road ahead.
“I would love to eventually make it. But now I have to pay out of pocket for everything. And that’s not sustainable forever.”
From stream samples to wood bison
In parallel with her athletic career, Sobkowich has been building a research portfolio that would be impressive for any student, let alone one training five days a week.
It started inthird year with a position in Dr. John Richardson’s lab, sorting stream invertebrates and doing field work at the Malcolm Knapp Research Forest. A directed study with Dr. Anil Shrestha on species distribution modelling for the collared pika followed — until a competing team published the same idea, forcing a pivot to wood bison and coding the model from scratch in R.
“My supervisor really encouraged me to do it. It’s a really good skill to have.”
Her results were surprising: the model suggested the wood bison population would shift south under climate change, counter to most published findings. She’s spending this summer refining the model and hopes to publish. She also holds a concurrent position in Dr. Richard Hamelin’s lab, collecting click beetle samples at the UBC Farm and supporting the team’s DNA extraction work.
What comes next
Sobkowich plans to pursue a master’s degree in 2027, with a year off to travel first. She wants to stay at UBC FES — “there’s no better forestry program” — and is reaching out to researchers working at the intersection of climate change, conservation, and animal ecology. The long game is a professorship.
“Teaching people what you love just seems really cool. So many profs gave me opportunities — the lab work, this interview, asking me to be the grad student speaker. It would be really cool to give back the same way, because it’s what makes your university experience, and my faculty made mine.”
Hanna Sobkowich graduates from UBC’s Faculty of Forestry & Environmental Stewardship with a Bachelor of Science in Forest Sciences (Honours) in May 2026.
