When Kasandra Vegas graduated from Northern Arizona University in 2013 she pretty much consigned her track and field career to a scrapbook in her North Shore home.

A winner of Big Sky Conference student-athlete honors and nominee for the NCAA Woman of the Year Award and Coach John Wooden Citizenship Cup, the Kamehameha Schools graduate was moving on with her life — all the way to Australia. A graduate school scholarship to study International Public Health at the University of Sydney would be challenge enough.

Or so it seemed.

But less than a year into grad school she picked up the hammer and discus at some area meets in Sydney and started winning medals.

Before she knew it there was an offer to try out for the University of Sydney team and coveted recognition and induction into the Elite Athlete Program and medals in the Pacific Games and Oceania Championships.

Now, with the graduate degree in hand, the focus is on trying to earn a berth in the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, either at large or as a member of the Samoa team.

It is a remarkable ascent for somebody who seemed to have closed the book on competition, especially when track and field had once been a self-described “fun sport” while she devoted her energies to soccer.

She came to track and field late in her days at Kamehameha but still managed a second-place state championships finish in the discus her senior year.

“I’m really not surprised at anything she does,” said Kahu Curt Kekuna of Kawaiaha’o Church. “Watching her grow up, she’s always been very goal-oriented. She comes from a very supportive family.”

Vegas has been in Hawaii this month coaching a girls water polo team from Australia but will soon head to New Zealand to work and train for Olympic qualifying.

It is something she hardly imagined at NAU, where she was first introduced to the hammer. But acceptance into the Elite Athletic Program at Sydney both opened her eyes to the possibilities and raised her competitive sights. “There are so many great athletes there that to be among them was (inspiring),” Vegas said.

What came with it was an athletic stipend. “An athletic scholarship is different in Australia than it is in the U.S.,” Vegas said. “In the U.S. an athletic scholarship pays for academics and everything. In Australia it pays for athletics because that is where you get the money to pay for things like entry fees, travel expenses to get to meets, all of which you have to do on your own.”

Still, there would be two-hour commutes to some training and longer journeys across Australia and the Pacific for meets. At the 2014 Oceania Championships in the Cook Islands she won bronze in the hammer and discus. She also double bronzed in the 2015 Pacific Games in Papua New Guinea and took bronze in the hammer in the 2015 Oceania Championships in Australia.

“It is funny the way it has turned out, but I’m loving the challenge,” Vegas said.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.