Winter Divisionals Meet Recap - Feb. 2025
Winter Divisionals Meet Recap - Feb. 2025
ORCA had 10 qualifiers for last weekend’s 2025 Winter North & Interior Divisional Championships. These swimmers were: Bea Fletcher, Adleigh Kunka, Emily Burman, Nicolas Temple, Alicia Jell, Ainsley Campbell, Elizabeth van der Vyver, Isla Fletcher, Madeleine Dumayne, and Kendra Yeoman.
For those who don’t know, Divisionals is a 3-day prelims and finals event that occurs twice a year. It is a qualifier meet, meaning that every swimmer who attended had to first achieve an age-specific time standard before they could sign-up and compete. This format makes for a lot of fast racing and a high level of competition as our qualifiers go up against the qualifiers from 20 other teams in the North & Interior part of our Province.
Our Summerland Orcas trained really hard for this event and set many big goals in the lead up. Unfortunately, between all the flus and colds going around (and an nasty snowboarding injury 4 days prior to the meet), there were some early withdrawals and some others who weren't able to swim all their events. Even so, this group of kids continued to impress me with their willingness to fight through obstacles and push themselves in ways they often didn’t previously believe possible.
Main Topic this Weekend: Resilience vs. Healthy Decisions
These were definitely the two concepts that we discussed the most throughout the swim meet. In some scenarios we talked about needing to push ourselves to be resilient even when things seem difficult, learning in the process that we can often go past what we thought of as our limits. At other times, however, we discusses the need to make healthy decisions, including stepping back and not racing, even if all the hard work has already been done. In this circumstance, when our bodies are using our energy to fight a cold or sickness, etc., then we need to realize that this isn’t quitting, but instead being smart. There will always be another swim meet, but learning to acknowledge when our bodies need to rest is a life skill equally as important as learning how to push ourselves through discomfort. The maturity in these conversations spoke to the incredible drive, motivation, and strength of each of these kids, even when the result wasn't what they wanted. We're proud of all of you!
Highlights
On day one of competition we had a number of finals, some new divisional times, and several gutsy performances from our ORCA swimmers. A highlight was the 13-14 girls relay team, who just missed the podium in an exciting race to place 4th in the 4x50m Freestyle. As a team, they combined to swim 200m in under 2 minutes, a full 3.5 seconds faster than their accumulated best times! Other highlights included Adleigh and Ainsley’s personal bests in the 400m Freestyle and Kendra’s first divisional final in the 50m Breaststroke. Impressive swimming!
Day two continued with a few more going home sick, but still produced several big races. These included Bea’s besting her previous times in both her 200m and 50m Freestyles, Ainsley’s first ever sub-30 second 50m Freestyle, and Elizabeth’s first 35 second 50m Butterfly. Way to push through team!
Day three saw some extremely tired kids show up to the pool, but their determination was on display as they still came away with some massive improvements. A specific shout out to Alicia for finishing off the weekend with a smooth 2.63 second improvement in her 100m Butterfly, Madeleine for a 4.17 second drop in her 200m Breaststroke, and Nicolas for going sub-36 in his 50m Backstroke for the first time. Great work you guys!
A bonus shout out to Nicolas and Kendra for attending their first Divisional meets and swimming like pros, and to Isla, who took the role of our Orca mascot very seriously and cheered on her teammates all weekend despite not being able to swim herself.
Summary
All in all, while there were some tears, there were also a whole lot of smiles and laughs throughout the weekend, and just like at every other swim meet this year, I was reminded of how lucky we are to have such a great group of kids, and such a supportive environment for these kids to embrace. Thank-you to all the parents and families who support this mission. It makes a difference!
Finally, a huge thank you to the Meet Managers from KISU, who always put in a lot of time and effort to making this sort of event happened, as well as Melissa and the crew that came out from Swim BC. Even though it wasn’t everyone’s ideal weekend, these are always memorable events and require a lot of work to put on. Looking forward to the Summer Divisionals!
Coach Janae