The Fort St. John Inconnu swim club held its first Spring Sprint Cup, since the pandemic, May 20-21 at the North Peace Leisure Pool.
This year's event was dedicated to club teammate Tegan Nielsen who suffered a severe spinal cord injury during a tobogganing accident in mid-March.
"For a lot of our swimmers, it was their first time without Tegan at a swim meet," said head coach Josh Sorensen. "There was definitely some emotions we're not used to seeing on a pool deck, but they were ultimately able to deal with it positively."
And, the results showed just that, with Inconnu swimmers topping seven of 10 age classes.
Sorensen was proud of his team's showing with everything the weekend brought.
"Evident by a lot of the results. It was just good to see. Improvement across the board. As much as our swimmers showed up and won the races they needed to, the big piece was the improvement, even from our meet back in December."
Another aspect, he said, was the ability for some swimmers, like Julien Kemp, to excel in disciplines they're not necessarily familiar with.
"This was very much a different meet for him. He does, kind of, the longer distances, the 400-metres or at least the 200-metres and above," said Sorensen. "This meet, he was doing a lot of 50s and 100s, so it was good to see him get a chance to do something different and still have some success in there."
Next up for many on the team: the Divisionals down in Kelowna in June.
Below are the top three finishers, based on combined points over the weekend, in each age class of this year's Spring Sprint Cup:
Boys 8 & under
- 1st: Chael Pelletier, 8, Piranhas
- 2nd: Marco Modde, 8, Inconnu
- 3rd: Ian Brand, 8, Inconnu
Boys 9-10
- 1st: David Brand, 9, Inconnu
- 2nd (tie): Elias Stirling, 10, Inconnu; Maddox Woodruff, 10, Piranhas
Boys 11-12
- 1st: Ryder Modde, 12, Inconnu
- 2nd: Mick Aldred, 12, Piranhas
- 3rd: Kieran Rogers, 12, Inconnu
Boys 13-14
- 1st: Nate Rogers, 14, Inconnu
- 2nd: Mason Stirling, 14, Inconnu
- 3rd: Brandon Stanton, 13, Piranhas
Mens 15-18
- 1st: Owen Lang, 15, Inconnu
- 2nd: Julien Kemp, 15, Inconnu
- 3rd: Alexander McDonald, 17, Inconnu
Girls 8 & under
- 1st: Kaislyn Kusyk, 8, Piranhas
- 2nd: Alexander Cruz, 8, Piranhas
- 3rd (tie): Ella Lukoni, 8, Piranhas; Ashlyn Canning, 8, Piranhas
Girls 9-10
- 1st: Quinn McCue. 10, Inconnu
- 2nd: Layla Waberski, 10, Inconnu
- 3rd: Tejaswi Pammidi, 10, Piranhas
Girls 11-12
- 1st: Jordyn Cyr, 12, Piranhas
- 2nd: Oluwapemisire Oyedeji, 12, Inconnu
- 3rd (tie): Marlie Koch, 11, Piranhas; Annika Seely, 12, Piranhas
Girls 13-14
- 1st: Abigail Cruz, 13, Piranhas
- 2nd: Mya Waberski, 13, Inconnu
- 3rd: Sydney Morgan, 13, Piranhas
Womens 15-18
- 1st: Frankie Woods, 15, Inconnu
- 2nd: n/a
- 3rd: n/a
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