The Bluebacks Swim Club took a strong contingent of 28 swimmers to Prince George for a regional competition just off of spring break and came in sixth.
The big news, said coach Chris Street, was a combined 72 per cent of converted best times in which short length results are converted to long length results to estimate the finishing time for the latter.
“Beating converted times is usually pretty hard for us so doing it at a 72 per cent clip is outstanding,” he said.
Some of the highlights include Meredith Acal (11) making both her first ever northern and interior divisional qualifying time and her first ever ManSask “AA” time to qualify for the ManSask Championships with a 35.79 50 freestyle.
Paige Constantinescu (12) also made her first divisional times with a 34.21 50 freestyle and a 42.58 50 backstroke.
Paige might have also had the swim of the meet when she carved 44 seconds off her 400 freestyle, Street noted.
Reed Downs (11) picked up his first two Divisional cuts as well. He made it with a 45.12 50 breaststroke and a 3:34.05 200 breaststroke.
Zion Girard (13) and Alyssa Metzger (11) both made their first ManSask “A” times to qualifiy for either Manitoba or Saskatchewan’s Junior Provincials) in the 50 freestyle (35.27) and 50 breaststroke (49.52) respectively.
Gabe Ungehoejer (13) was the only Bluebacks medalist, winning the bronze aggregate in the 13-14 boys age group.
Other notable performances include Hillary Callahan (12) dropping nearly 14 seconds off her 200 free while Theo Gardiner (8) took 14, 20, 10 and 14 seconds respectively off his 50 breast, 100 back, 50 free and 50 backstrokes respectively.
Seamus McMurray (11) dumped 24 seconds off his 100 backstroke and another 24 seconds off his 100 breaststroke. Brook-Lynn Meijer (17) took more than 30 seconds off her 400 free. Skylar Purita (11) took 19 seconds off her 200 free.
Finally, Abrielle Weston (12) took more than 15 seconds off her 100 breaststroke. Georgia Bergstreiser (17), Zion, Alyssa and Skylar all swam new best times in all of their individual events.