The Sailfish swim club spent last weekend swimming laps around the club’s water rivals.
During the annual Sailfish swim meet the home team sent 79 swimmers who tallied up 1,204 points to score a first place finish for the team in the tournament.
“It was phenomenal,” coach Glenn Wilson said.” The kids were fantastic and we had lots of personal bests. When our team does well it means that every kid gets to share in that happiness.”
The home club toppled the competition with the North Edmonton Swim Club coming in second with 869 points and the Stony Plain Sharks sliding into third place with 703 points.
The Sailfish totaled 989 points in the individual races but for Wilson his biggest point of pride is their performance in the relay. The home squad totalled 215 points from the relay and the second place team only tallied 95 points.
“We over-doubled the points obtained from relays and that’s a big indicator of how healthy the team is overall when you can start pulling points in from the relays,” Wilson said.
On top of dominating the relay the Sailfish set some impressive personal best records. Of the 320 swims competed by the Sailfish sent to the meet, 78 per cent were personal best times.
“That is pretty crushing,” Wilson said. “We had kids that won first place and gold in their event and still didn’t get a personal best. We are pretty lucky. We have kids that are dedicated and six assistant coaches who love the challenge of getting kids better. These coaches are just awesome.”
Along with the coaches the event couldn’t run without all of the parent volunteers. This year there were 150 volunteers that worked before, during and after the event to help the team succeed.
Wilson is also pleased with the result because this is the meet that they use to prepare for the regional championships.
“Even though regionals are two swim meets away I like our home meet to be a show-off meet,” Wilson said. “The kids have in their head that this is what it would look like at regional championships.”
This year the Sailfish get to host the regional championships on their home turf at Fountain Park Recreation Centre. Along with not having to travel too far, the team will have other technical advantages that come with the comforts of swimming in their home pool, which has raised expectations for the team.
“If we perform the same way we did at our home meet there is no reason to expect anything less than a win,” Wilson said. “We won (the) regional championship last year and have won for the last six years in a row. I expect kids to do well, to learn, to focus and to gain a personal best.”
The Sailfish have one meet in Hinton on August 6 before the regional championships come back to St. Albert on August 13.
