Quesnel’s competitive swimming club, the Waveriders, are getting ready for the upcoming season.
While events do not start until May, the team of parent volunteers, pool staff and head coach, Jeritt Brink, are hustling to ensure everything is prepared, so competitors stand the best chance of success over summer.
The summer clubs take place over a shorter season, so members tend to train for the sprint events and sometimes the 200-metre individual medley (a combination of all swimming events – butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke and front crawl).
There is a lot to look forward to in the coming months for the club.
Garnet Currie will be attending an international meet in June.
Audrey Jespersen should be attending the Canadian Junior Championships in July.
“She just needs to throw down some swims in a long course [50-metre pool] for long-course times,” Brink says.
“Being from a summer swimming background, she’s only ever competed in short-course pools.”
Billy Swyers has qualified for the Far Western Championships, which will be in California.
The club’s two Paralympic swimmers, Logan Godsoe and Hannah Trimble, have international meets coming up and if all goes well, there’s a potential of Olympic trials, which everyone is quite excited for.
Long course Tier 1 and Tier 2 meets are in July, as are the B.C. Summer Games. Athletes like Luca Armstrong, Gavin Currie, Chloe Hampton and more are expected to attend.
According to Brink, the seven-year-old club is getting better each year, but still faces many challenges.
“This community now has the potential to have over 100 swimmers.”
“We range from kids just wanting to stay fit, to those learning to swim, to the national/international qualifiers, as well as two international Paralympic swimmers, but we are restricted from growth and better training due to pool space and times.”
In an ideal world, he has some ideas on what he would love to do.
“If I won a small lotto, I’d pay to knock the walls out, extend our pool another 30 metres or so back into the ample parking lot, pour a new anti slip deck and make a 2/3 lane little 15-metre area so pool programs for swimming can run at the same time as our Waveriders/Sealions/high school ones.”
If there was money left over, Brink says he would get the community a simple but fun water slide and maybe even a surf/body board machine like Kelowna’s H2O Adventure and Fitness Centre has.
He thinks it would be great for keeping youth out of trouble.
