Watching swimmers excel

For almost two decades, I have spent the Memorial Day weekend at the Canada Games Complex in Thunder Bay officiating at the Thunder Bolts swim meet. This particular swim meet attracts swimmers from Minnesota, North Dakota, and Manitoba and across Northwestern Ontario.
For Northwest region swimmers, it is their only meet where they compete in a 50 metre pool. The racing and strategy is much different that in the shorter 25m pool.
The meet is also the graduation ceremony for many 17 and 18-year-old swimmers from across the region. They will be graduating and heading off to colleges and universities this fall. Some will continue to swim competitively. Others will use the skills and confidence that they learned from swimming and will apply it to new endeavors.
I am now seeing swimmers whose parents swam with my children compete and be successful.
And those graduating swimmers, the Donovan Taylors, the Micheal Balcaens, have become role models for swimmers who are just starting out.
A young swimmer who only jumped into the pool six weeks ago, told me she couldn’t believe how fast Donovan was and she hoped that by the time she was 17 she could have the same skills that he possessed in the pool.
I doubt that she believed me when I explained to her all the trials and tribulations that an awkward uncoordinated swimmer who was eight years old could blossom into a gifted swimming athlete.
Every senior group spawns the hopes of young swimmers below them.
On the deck Sunday morning, a coach from Minneapolis gathered all of his breast stroke swimmers to the side of the pool to watch Takara Martin, an Northwestern Ontario Olympic hopeful give a lesson in the stroke as she swam the 100m breast stroke. He pointed out every detail of her smooth precision of the stroke. She led by almost 15m in the swim.
And coming up against those senior swimmers who will be leaving are another group. Megan Carlson whose mother swam with the Aquanauts is turning heads in Thunder Bay. Jake Wickstrom at only 14 is making a name for himself while swimming in Dryden.
Both Lyndsi Jo Wilson and Regan Danylchuk from the Aquanuts, clearly demonstrated that they have the passion and drive to win and this past weekend, seemed to have found another dimension to their swimming that drove them to swim faster than ever.
Adam Stromberg at fourteen, seems to have discovered that there are three other strokes beside freestyle that he can use to pick up hardware at meets. At fourteen, he has become a threat to swimmers much older than himself.
The May Invitational is both a graduating swim meet for the older swimmers and a coming out swim meet for a whole new group of younger swimmers in the region.
Today, swimmers from the Northwest are swimming faster than many of their predecessors did a decade ago. It is testimony to the passions that their coaches have instilled in them and the improved coaching skills of both paid and volunteer coaches.
Swimmers success lies in the belief that they can compete both within the region and against swimmers from across Canada. It was a great weekend for swimmers.

–Jim Cumming,
Publisher