Summer Swimming Update

The kids have been having a good season in summer swimming again this year. It’s their fourth year swimming, and both of them are becoming old veterans of the swimming scene. Emily takes it a bit more seriously than Mack at this point, being a bit more focussed on what she wants to achieve. Mack, despite having a shorter attention span than his sister, still manages to work hard every practice. He’s not motivated by any grand goals or anything, he just wants to finish everything first.

This year Mack has a strong competitor in our region for the first time. A little guy from Drayton Valley has been giving Mack some good races through the season, and has handed Mack his hat a couple of times in the IM. Hopefully this will help Mack be a bit more focussed. He works hard in practice, but he doesn’t always put a lot of thought into his technique and such. It helps that his coach is very good at working with him on technique. Thanks to her help he’s become more of a breast-stroke swimmer than I ever was, although admittedly that’s not a particularly impressive feat.

Emily has been dominating her age group in our region all season. She qualified for year-round-swimming’s summer provincials in the very first meet of the year this year, instead of at the last possible meet like last year. At year-round provincials, she won 50 free, got 3rd in 50 fly and 4th in 100 free. She was seventh in 50 back and the ASSA all stars got a bronze medal on the 4×50 free relay. Emily also broke two ASSA all star records, which are basically summer swimming’s long-course records. She broke the 100 free and 50 fly records. She was pretty proud of herself, and so were we. Mack was even impressed watching.

One of the most fun parts of the meet for me was getting Emily to meet my coach from the ’80s at Keyano, Dave Johnson. Dave was the National Team coach for several years, and has returned to his roots (and what he does best, I think) coaching at the club head coach level at Calgary Cascade Swim Club. I also introduced Emily to another coach that I’ve known for many years, Tom Ponting. Tom was a three time Olympian for Canada, and was the best butterfly swimmer in Canada for many years. I don’t know if Emily was impressed or not. At the end of the meet, Dave offered one of his typical backhanded compliments for Emily. He said to me “I watched your daughter swim. She could be good. You just have to get her to kick.” Typical Dave.