Barry Stewart
Hope Standard
The Hope RiverMonsters swim club stepped confidently onto the stage last weekend at the BC Summer Swimming Association’s provincial championships in Kamloops — and showed that they deserved to be there.
Violette Freimark answered her first-place seeding in the Division 3 girls’ 100-metre freestyle by winning gold, in addition to silvers in the 50 free and 50 butterfly, and bronze in the 50 backstroke. Times, in respective order: 1 minute 7.28 seconds, 30.6, 33.61 and 35.95 seconds.
Eli Reist won gold in the Div. 1 boys’ 50-metre backstroke, silvers in the 50 fly and 50 breaststroke, and bronze in the 100 free. Times, in respective order: 43.13, 40.95, 49.88 and 1:23.99.
Ivan Lipnitskiy rounded out Hope’s nine medals with a silver in the boys’ Div. 1 open category 50-metre breaststroke, in a time of 41.35 seconds.
“It was a very successful meet for our swimmers,” said club president, Catherine Freimark. “All of our other swimmers were in the fifth to twenty-third ranking, provincially.”
The RiverMonsters qualified a girls’ relay team for the the Div. 4 4×50 freestyle by including underagers Sonia Au-Yeung from Div. 2 and Violette Freimark from Div. 3 to go along with Div. 4 swimmers Danika Hope and Avery Loring. They finished in tenth place in the province.
After a bit of a hiatus, Hope swimmers can take part in winter maintenance programs, with limited hours of coaching, until next swim season.
READ MORE: Hope’s swim club goes to provincials
