It was the first time the swim club has hosted a mock meet in half a decade.
The Barrhead Swimming Club held the event at the Barrhead Regional Aquatics Centre March 18, drawing participation from approximately 40 competitive and non-competitive swimmers alike, and club president Charlene Assenheimer says it will help guide the club in the direction they would like to go for future events.
“The whole idea was to run through what a swim meet would look like at our new facility because we’re hoping to host an event of our own sometime in 2019,” Assenheimer said, noting the club requires a representative from Swim Alberta signing off on the facility before they can do so.
Assenheimer said the mock meet was not an official event.
“None of it was sanctioned in any way. It was just for fun. The times our swimmers were clocked at were for their own benefit, to showcase improvement and it gave our non-competitive swimmers an opportunity to try out what it would be like to participate in an actual meet,” she said, adding the club is all about swimming for life.
“While we have competitive and non-competitive members, the only difference between the two is that the former actually go to swim meets and that means more opportunity to train should they choose. We allow lots of flexibility from our competitive swimmers. They’re often off doing other sports and things and by no means have to commit to every single practice.”
Assheimer said it was nice to see the amount of parental and community support, in terms of the total number of people in attendance.
“It was a great day. We had a lot of people, members from the old club, who came out and it felt like a bit of a reunion in that respect,” Assenheimer said.
Swimming coach Liz Kletzel and club treasurer Sandy McCarthy agreed.
“This mock meet was just with our own swimmers but not every single one of our members was there and there wasn’t anybody from another town or club present,” Kletzel said, adding some of the participants had never been to an actual swim meet before.
“We hope this might spur some of the non-competitive swimmers into wanting to be in competitive next year,” she added.
“If this were an actual meet where other towns come here, this place would have been packed. We did have some people from our old club and some of our old coaches were on hand to help out because we haven’t had a real meet here in about five years,” McCarthy said, noting that the club has participated in swim meets hosted by both Edmonton and Edson in the past.
“We just couldn’t get into a lot of the other clubs’ meets because we’re new and they were already booked but all of that is changing for us. We’re starting to get our name back out there and that’s a good thing,” McCarthy said, adding the club will be participating in a swim meet in Edmonton April 7.
