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The Yorkton Speed Swim Club recently competed at the Regina Optimist Dolphin Swim Club (RODS) Invitational Swim Meet in Regina.

The meet was held over three days at the Lawson Aquatic Center. This was one of the largest and most competitive meets that the team has swam at this season. There were swimmers present representing Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Ontario in attendance. The team had 14 swimmers compete, and all of them experienced success at one level or another.

Jayden Lang, an 11-year-old swimmer from Melville who trains and competes with Yorkton, recorded an AA time in the 50m butterfly event. Swimming the AA time should allow her to qualify to compete in the Manitoba versus Saskatchewan Meet in Winnipeg this July. Qualifying for the Man-Sask meet (as it is referred to in swimming circles) is a huge accomplishment for young competitive swimmers.

Lang is the second Yorkton swimmer to qualify for the meet this season. Jennifer Haczkewicz swam an AA time in the 50m backstroke earlier this season to qualify, and again met the AA standard at this Regina meet. Lang had two top-10 finishes at the meet, finishing second in the 100m butterfly, and fourth in the 50m butterfly.

With each meet the club attends swimmers chip away at their personal best times and bring them down lower and lower.

Massive improvements are quite often recorded by the clubs younger swimmers as they learn better technique in the pool. The older swimmers bring down their times in smaller proportion through the refining of their technique in all components of swimming, the various components include; the strokes, breathing, turns, diving, and starting from the blocks.

At the RODS meet several swimmers turned in massive improvements. Brandon Nord, a 9-year-old Manitoba swimmer that competes with the Yorkton squad, chopped 47 seconds off of his 100m freestyle time.

Matthew Todas clipped 36 seconds off of his 400m freestyle event. Todas lead the club with five top ten finishes. Matthew raced to a fourth place finish in the 50m breaststroke, seventh in both the 50m and 100m freestyle, ninth in the 400m freestyle, and 10 in the 50m backstroke. Gabe Loster followed suit by chopping 35 seconds from his 200m breaststroke event en route to a fourth place finish. Connor Watrych erased 30 seconds from his 50m breaststroke.

Alex Flaman improved in six of the seven races she swam, including taking 26 seconds off of her 200m breaststroke event. Emma Just continues to impress this season and she improved in all seven of the races she swam this meet.

Her best improvement came in her 200m breaststroke where she shaved 21 seconds of her personal best time.

Zoe Flaman also continues to clip along meet after meet and dropped 13 seconds of off her previous best time in her 100m breaststroke event. Jillian Just and Kelsey Haczkewicz each took 11 seconds off of a race at the meet as well, for Just it was the 400m freestyle, and for Haczkewicz it was the 100m backstroke. Just also cracked the top 10 in the 100m breaststroke, finishing seventh. Auston Roberts took eight seconds off of his 100m freestyle event.

The sheer size of the meet allowed for the swimmers to compete in preliminary heats and then qualify for the finals. Competing in the finals at such a big meet is really neat because the announcer announces your name as you enter the pool and race in each final event. Several of the clubs swimmers qualified for the finals at the meet. This in itself is a huge accomplishment, because it denotes that the swimmer has finished in the top 16 in the race, and in essence in the top third of the competition.

The next meet that the Yorkton club shall attend is an outdoor meet in Moose Jaw this June.
­­-Submitted