It was a bit of a different schedule to follow for the Athabasca Rapids Swim club a couple of weekends ago.
The team was split in order to attend a pair of age-specific swim meets in the Edmonton area on Mar. 21 and 22.
Five swimmers from the club’s 10-years and under group took part in the annual Grizzly Cup hosted at the Bonnie Doon pool by the Edmonton Keyano Swim Club.
This group managed several medal finishes to go along with a number of personal best times.
Kyra Sheppard was huge in the eight-years and under girls category, despite her smaller stature.
She captured a pair of second place finishes in the 50m freestyle and backstroke as well as finished third in the 50m butterfly and the 100m breaststroke, backstroke and freestyle. She also managed to put of four new personal bests times during her medal runs.
In the eight-years and under boys division, Ayden Duniece showed he can haul away some medals as well. He took third in both the 25m backstroke and breaststroke, while racking up six new personal best times in the process.
Two other Rapids swimmers at the event may not have walked off with some hardware, but showed some great improvements.
Zachary Sikora, 10, took an incredible 13 seconds off his previous best 100m breaststroke time as well as shaved 11 seconds off his 200m freestyle time to go along with three other personal best times while Avery Kamelchuk, 9, added a pair personal bests in the 50m breaststrok and 100m freestyle.
At that meet, Rapids swimmers put up a total of 17 personal bests.
Meanwhile, the older group was in Beaumont for the Triton Sprint Challenge where Dylan Fitzsimmons flew to the top of the open 50m butterfly posting a time of 30.66 seconds.
He also just missed the podium on two other occasions plus posting four new personal bests.
Overall, the team put up a total of 42 personal best times at the sprint event, which was didn’t rank swimmers in age categories for the event.
Erika Head was on top of the heap, putting up personal best in eight of her nine races, while first-year Rapids swimmer, Ben Olsen, 13, went one better by posting nine personal best times. However, he was the only Rapids athlete to compete in the bonus 800m freestyle time trial, where he finished in a respectable 13 minutes, 36 seconds.
Andrea Woudstra, Makayla Sheppard, and Bo Maier collected six personals best swims.
Tim Fitzsimmons, 11 was the other swimmer at the event and posted three new personal best times.
Head coach Steve Splinter continues to be impressed by the good crop of swimmers and simply how competitive they have been this season.
“We have a group of swimmers that are very talented and who also work hard,” he stated in an interview last week.
Splinter and the rest of the Athabasca Rapids Swim Club will be in Edmonton for the Olympian Swim Club Spring Pentathlon on Apr. 18 at the Kinsmen Sports Centre.
In this unique event, swimmer compete is five different events. This will also mark the Rapids first long-course meet – competing in an Olympic 50m pool – this season.
