Swimming Canada's Targeted Distance Camp recently wrapped up in Fort Myers, Fla. Training at Florida Gulf Coast University's 50m outdoor pool were eight junior-aged swimmers who will hope to make Team Canada for the World Junior Swimming Championships Sept. 4-9 in Israel.
Among the eight are the Pointe-Claire Aquatic Club's very own, Zachary Parisé and Lydia Kilger. This camp also provided a week of coaching development. Martin Gingras, also from the Pointe-Claire Aquatic Club, was appointed Head Coach for the camp.
PHOTO: Facebook, Pointe-Claire Aquatic Club
The team included swimmers from across the country: Laila Oravsky (Barrie Trojans Swim Club, ON), Julia Strojnowska (Langley Olympians Swim Club, BC), Aidan Erickson (Langley Olympians Swim Club, BC), Olivier Risk (ROC Swimming, ON), Maria Saldana Riebeling (Canadian Dolphin Swim Club, BC), and Timothé Barbeau (Neptune Natation, QC).
PHOTO: Facebook, Swimming Canada
The camp is part of Swimming Canada's High-Performance Strategy. It gave the young swimmers a challenging week of endurance-based swimming and the opportunity to go 'head to head' with their peers.
National Distance & Open Water Coach Mark Perry was delighted with how the camp went.
"Improving distance swimming as a whole is the goal of the initiative, and it's been exciting watching these young swimmers go through eleven workouts, learning to manage their bodies through 75km of swimming," Perry said. "The coaches were able to individualize workouts and learn more about how to produce and then prepare distance swimmers for the future. It is going to be very exciting watching this group race at trials."
When asked about how she felt the camp went, Oravsky said, "The training camp was a great week of challenges, learning, and getting the opportunity to work with amazing swimmers and coaches."
Perry led the coaches in an opportunity to collaborate in developing and running workouts for the swimmers. Representing clubs from across the country were Chrystèle Roy-L'Ecuyer (Neptune Natation, QC), Endi Babi (Barrie Trojans Swim Club, ON), Tristan Cote (Red Deer Catalina Swim Club, AB), and Justin Daly (Spartan Swim Club, BC) who had key roles as assistant coaches. Also joining the group for the latter half of the camp was National Development Coach Ken McKinnon.
SOURCE: Swimming Canada
