The local swim club is hoping to sail its way to first place this weekend at its annual swim meet.
The Sailfish are hosting their yearly summer swim meet on July 17 and July 18. This is one of the many meets they will attend over the summer, but the only one that they host during the season.
The Sailfish swim club is home to 92 swimmers between the ages of four and 18. The youngest is a girl who just turned four. She will be participating in this weekend’s event, along with 60 other swimmers from the club.
Over the course of the weekend, the pool will host 1,000 swims by athletes from the nine clubs in Region B. With such a large event, the club needs to wrangle plenty of volunteers to co-ordinate the competition. During the action, there will be between 50 and 75 volunteers working at all times.
“I can’t believe I got lucky enough to live in St. Albert,” Coach Glenn Wilson said. “I have lived all over the world but here the volunteers are unbelievable. The people from St. Albert just like to get involved. They set such a high bar for everybody else. I’m very grateful to have volunteers that work this hard.”
So far this year they have won every single meet they have taken part in. The club is hoping this weekend will be no different. Wilson credits the success to the great group of kids in the club.
“These kids are nothing less than astounding,” Wilson said. “They’re such fun kids. They laugh hard and they’re a riot. But when the time comes to train, they train really hard.”
Another reason the club is so successful is because of its swimming philosophy. Wilson will focus on technique rather than speed, which leads to fewer technique disqualifications.
“It’s much more important to finish a race than just go fast,” Wilson said. “We work on skills and when we focus on skills they generally tend to do better. It takes some of the pressure off and it creates a better mindset. We don’t emphasize the winning.”
Wilson said this weekend’s meet will be a great spectator event. The races taking place will be backstroke, breaststroke, butterfly, freestyle and individual medley. The event will close out with the relay races and it is all open to the public to come watch and cheer on the swimmers. Wilson predicts provincial records will be broken this weekend by members of the home club.
Next up for the Sailfish is the regional swim meet, bringing together the nine teams in Region B to compete for spots in the provincial meet. The top two finishers in each race will move on the provincial championship.
The action on Saturday starts at 8 a.m. and runs all day at the Fountain Park Pool. The event is free and open to the public.
