In their first meet of the season, a team of 18 Blue Fin swimmers traveled to Kamloops to race against both Kamloops and Vernon at the Kamloops Aquatic Festival.
“This meet gives our new competitive swimmers a chance to get their feet wet and try their hand at shorter and faster swims, while our more seasoned competitors challenge themselves at racing the longer distances,” said Chad Webb, the team’s head coach.
“The team has been training diligently over the last few weeks and achieved close to 100 per cent personal best times this weekend.”
The Blue Fins had four new competitive swimmers join them at this event: Keiva Peterson, Conner Edwards, Elodie Aumond and Ashlyn Gill-Pieti.
“This is such a great meet for our new competitive swimmers, and by the end of the day you wouldn’t have known this was a first experience for them. They all stepped up and performed so well. Ashlyn was especially able to move past the nerves and swam a few incredible races, surprising not just us coaches, but I think herself too,” said Amanda Nemeth, assistant head coach.
“Her focus to not just survive but thrive in this first competition led to her being named our Junior Swimmer of the Meet.”
Other junior swimmer highlights include Emmeline Theriault and Lilly Reedman racing their first 800-metre race with both finishing under the 15-minute mark, while Jesse Neufeld and Sophia Ulrich also raced in new events, swimming their first 400-metre freestyle and 200-metre butterfly respectively.
In the senior group, the Fins saw a number of swimmers swim back-to-back gruelling races, including Aliya Grant and Braedi Hamar swimming the 200-metre butterfly and the 400-metre and 800-metre freestyle, and Gavin Reedman pushing hard to complete the 1500-metre freestyle, 400-metre intermediate medley and 200-metre butterfly.
However, it was Tiera French who took the title of Senior Swimmer of the meet. “Tiera has been very focused in her training, and that paid off in spades for her this weekend,” said Webb.
“She not only saw significant improvements in her times, but also had big technical breakthroughs in all of her swims. Those kinds of breakthroughs can take months of hard work, so seeing the results of that work so early in the season is really promising.”
The Blue Fins are now back in the water training for their next event in Prince George in mid-November.
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