The Moses lake meet kicked off today after a fun night at the Mariners game last night in Seattle. We had about 30 swimmers with families come out for a Blue Jays vs Mariners game with the swimmers dancing their patns off to get on the big screen! Friday morning was a travel day with a three hour drive down to Moses Lake for day 1 of the 2022 Summer Sizzler.
Our first day at 2022 Fraser & Island Summer Divisionals proved sucessful for our 22 athletes competing this weekend! Friday prelims started off with 20 personal bests and 15 qualified for finals. Nolan Greenwood made his provincial cut in the 200m IM during plrelims with a personal best of 2:44.49. We started off finals with Nolan & Sebastian Damian in 100m backstroke. Sebastian placed 7th with a personal best of 1:19.48, and Greenwood placed 8th. On the 13-14 category, Noah Hicks placed 4th overall, shaving just over a second off his personal best for a time of 1:06.35.
This past weekend 9 of our Senior group swimmers competed at UBC Aquatic Centre at Mel Zajac's 57th International swim meet. There was over 700 athletes competing from Canada and the US!
Vikes athlete William Risk headed off to Mallorca, Spain today for an international Open Water competition called the 'Best Fest' - one of 25 athletes representing Canada. Will qualified for the team as part of Team Ontario, his home province. His qualifications came from his 1500m freestyle result at World Trials in April 2022. He will be racing the 5km race on May 29th, the 1.5km swim on May 31st, and the 10km swim on June 2nd. Risk also has the potential to be a part of the 4x500m relay event on June 3rd.
A big congratulations to Eric Hedlin (Uvic Alumni) for qualifying for the FINA World Championships this past weekend based off of his performance in the 1500m freestyle. Eric will represent Canada in the open water FINA championships taking place in Budapest, Hungary at the end of June. Coach Ryan Clouston will be representing UVPCS as Eric's coach during this event. Eric was one of seven swimmers chosen to represent Canada in the Open Water category.
Commonwealth was a busy and exciting place this weekend with 2022 Bell Canadian Trials taking place, hosted by Swimming Canada & co-hosted by Island Swimming and yours truly. For the first time in almost three years, we had over 500 athletes filling Commonwealth Pool from 131 clubs all across Canada. Uvic - Pacific Coast Swimming had 19 swimmers competiting in various events over the course of the six day comeptition.
It has been a busy weekend at Commonwealth Pool with over 720 swimmers competing in this year's 2022 Swim BC Provincial Championships. Our team of Pacific Coast Swimming qualifiers have been shining with some fantastic performances so far this weekend. On Friday, Conor Poulin qualified for his first Canadian Westerns cut in 400m freestyle. Elizabeth Saska (first provincial compeition) came third in both the 100m freestyle & 50m backstroke.