Edmonton - The best and brightest of Canada's swimming world were honored during the final day of competition at the 2002 Canadian Open Swimming Championships and PCS was front and center. The 2001 - 2002 Canadian Long Distance Swimmer and Coach of the Year awards were all awarded to swimmers from Victoria's Pacific Coast Swimming. Winning the female Long Distance Swimmer of the Year was Karley Stutzel while her PCS teammate Dave Creel won the men's award. PCS Head Coach, Ron Jacks, was named Canada's Long Distance Coach of the Year.

Edmonton - Three PCS Swimmers won medals at the 2002 Canadian Open Swimming Championships in Edmonton, Alberta this past weekend. David Creel led the way winning a silver medal on day one in the 800 freestyle and then claiming the bronze in the 1500 freestyle on the final day of the competition. Jesse Jacks won a bronze medal for the 100 butterfly while Philip Weiss won a bronze in the 200 butterfly. Jacks used a great last 25 meters to claim the bronze medal over a number of the countries best butterfly swimmers.

Edmonton - Pacific Coast Swimming's David Creel won the silver medal in the men's 800 freestyle on the first day of the 2002 Canadian Open Swimming Championships. This was the first medal won by a PCS swimmer at a National Championships, but will certainly not be the last. In a tight race for the silver medal Creel held off challenges from two swimmers over the final two hundred meters to post a personal best time of 8:07.20. Creel will be looking for more medals in the 400 and 1500 freestyle races later in the weekend.

by Rich Cole
Full article appeared in the UVic Student Newspaper The Martlet

What did you do for reading break? A little traveling? Maybe you even managed to study a little bit between naps? While most were sleeping it off, the Vikes Varsity swim team defended their hometown pride.

After some early season meets, the team returned home to school the 17 other clubs that participated in the Pacific Cup at Commonwealth Place. Joining their Victoria affiliate Pacific Coast Swimming, the Vikes guarded their home waters and took first place.

Ten PCS swimmers made the trip up to Campbell River for their All-level meet. The group swam really well with most swimmers going best times in the majority of their events.

Standouts for the weekend were:

The full force of Pacific Coast Swimming was felt over the weekend at the Pacific Cup meet at Saanich Commonwealth Pool. PCS Swimmers at all levels had an excellent meet resulting in PCS winning the overall team title by more than 700 points.

The University of Victoria swim team joined with other PCS teammates to compete at the Colleges Cup in Vancouver and had some excellent performances. With the smallest team entered in the competition the team pulled together to finish in 3^rd place over all on the men's side and in fifth on the women's. For this competition the Vikes teamed up with Pacific Coast Swimming athletes John Stamhuis, Karley Stutzel and Christin Petelski to form the Victoria team entry.

A large portion of the PCS National / Varsity group competed at the first BC Senior Circuit meet of the 2002 - 2003 season. The BC Senior Circuit is composed of three meets culminating at the BC Senior Championships in February 2003. Athletes earn series points for placing in the top 16 in each event at the three meets with prize money being awarded in six separate categories (Sprint Free, Distance Free, Backstroke, Breaststroke, Butterfly and IM) for both male and female.

Pacific Coast had it's first meet and it was great! We had 25 swimmers with all their new t-shirts and caps on. Everyone had a great time and swam really well for the first meet of the year. We had five of our coaches come and check out the action and help to coach the swimmers at all levels. All in all it was a good experience for all the PCS swimmers who attended. We even came home with two bags of ribbons mostly blue! (the coaches favorite color). Swimmers can check the results out on the web in the next few days.

Karley Stutzel came off a tough race series at the 2002 World Open Water Swimming Championships to place 4th overall at the final FINA Open Water World Cup stop in Alexandria, Egypt. Her time of 2:14.04 was a mere 8 seconds behind the overall winner.

Dave Creel who had also just finished the 5km and 10km races at the World Championships also competed at the World Cup stop and finished his 10km race in a time of 2:04.44 good enough for eighth position overall and only 4 seconds behind 3rd place.