Pronghorns swimmers clock in impressive times to earn Athlete of the Week honours

By Lethbridge Herald on November 10, 2021.

A pair of swimmers have put on the laps that have landed them the University of Lethbridge Two Guys and a Pizza Place Pronghorn Athletes of the Week awards.

After swimming his way into the school’s record books yet again, Apollo Hess was named the Male Athlete of the Week, while Horns swimming teammate Sophie MacLean took home the Female Athlete of the Week award.

In his first season with the Pronghorns, Hess is scrawling his name all over the Horns’ record book.

After setting new program records in both of the previous meets this season, Hess set two more individual school records and helped set two relay records last weekend in Vancouver at the Odlum Brown Colleges Cup.

Opening the meet on Saturday, Hess set a new program mark and broke the meet record in the 50m breaststroke in the preliminaries and finished second in the finals later that day.

The LASC swimmer also set the school record in the 200m breaststroke later in the meet and now holds the school record in all three distances in breaststroke.

Swimming on all four of the Pronghorn relay teams, Hess was part of new records in the 4X50 freestyle and medley relays, while finishing second in both events.

After losing the 2020-21 season to the COVID-19 pandemic, MacLean has had a strong start to the season, setting new personal bests and moving into Pronghorn all-time top 10 times early into the season.

Last weekend in Vancouver, the Calgary native established new personal best times in the 50 and 100m backstroke events.

In the 50m she swam the fifth fastest time in Pronghorn history and moved into sixth on the Pronghorn all-time list in the 100m.

MacLean placed 12th in the 50m event, competing against all of the Canada West swimming schools, plus NCAA’s Simon Fraser University.

She also swam in three of the four Pronghorn relays that finished in the top-eight on the weekend.

The Pronghorns swim team will now prepare for the Canada West Championships Nov. 26-28 in Edmonton.

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