Quesnel swimmer Hannah Trimble got a taste of international competition at the beginning of this month — and she’s hoping that’s just the beginning.
Trimble recently competed at the 2019 U.S. Paralympics National Para Swimming Championships/Can/Am Open in Texas. The international meet took place Dec. 6-8 in Lewisville, Tex.
Trimble, who is 15, says this is “a very high-level meet to go to.”
“It was amazing because I got to race against people who have been to the Paralympics and won medals, and I got to hang out with a new team and with my friends,” she said.
At the meet, Trimble raced the 400m freestyle, 100m freestyle, 50m freestyle, 100m backstroke, 100m breaststroke, 200m individual medley and 100m butterfly.
In a roller-coaster competition, Trimble earned new best times in a couple of her races and got disqualified in the 100m butterfly.
Trimble says she learned a lot, and she has many take-aways from the experience.
She says one of the biggest things she will take away is “that there are things I need to work on to go faster, and there is opportunity farther than what I do now.”
In her 400m freestyle preliminary heat, Trimble had a time of 7:55.52. In her heat finals, swimming against athletes aged 14 to 29, she had a time of 8:12.25. In the 100m butterfly prelims, she had a time of 1:51.65. Trimble swam a 1:57.44 in the 100m backstroke prelims and swam a 1:54.15 in her finals heat.
In the 100m breaststroke prelims, she had a 2:05.00 race, and in her finals heat, she had a 2:11.11. In the 50m freestyle prelims, Trimble swam a 41.56, and she swam a 43.02 in her finals heat. In the 100m freestyle prelims, Trimble’s time was 1:38.57. Trimble swam the 200m individual medley prelims in 3:54.57 and had a time of 4:02.57 in her finals heat.
“It was fun, and I would like to go again,” said Trimble, noting she could go again, and the same meet would be held in a different location, and it apparently changes quite a bit year-to-year because she has a friend who went the year before, and it was quite different. “It would be fun to go in a different place.”
Next up for Trimble is Prospects West, a Para camp that takes place in February, and she is hoping to make the B.C. team for the Canadian Games in 2021. She is working towards her ultimate goal of making it to the 2024 Paralympic Games.
To reach that goal, Trimble says she knows “there is stuff I have to work on, but there are also things I do really well and am strong at.”
Trimble says her biggest strengths are probably her butterfly and her dolphin kick, while she feels she needs to work on her backstroke and her kick.
READ MORE: Quesnel’s Hannah Trimble wins six medals at swimming provincials
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