Lethbridge Orcas ride waves into new season

By Lethbridge Herald on June 6, 2023.

Herald photo by JUSTIN SEWARD Lethbridge Orcas’ Nicole Burgess practices her backstroke on Tuesday at Fritz Sick Pool.

By Justin Seward

Lethbridge Herald

The Lethbridge Orcas Summer Swim Club splashed  into a new season with the focus of having fun and make personal improvements with each meet.

“I mean they’re racing against other swimmers in the region, but it all comes down to their time and improving on their time,” said Orcas head coach Kira Armstrong.

“And not even necessarily improving their time, but focusing on what they’ve been doing in practice and stuff like that (and) just small improvements like that. And obviously it’s great to win a medal here and there. But the main thing is just to have fun and to see the improvements that they’re making in the pool.”

Armstrong thinks where the strengths will lie with this group is in the younger swimmers.

“Definitely in our younger swimmers,” said Armstrong.

“I mean we obviously have great, really fast, older swimmers. But we have such a big group of the younger guys coming in, that I think they’re really going to take over the age groups and just score a lot of points. But really it comes down to everything. I know swimming seems like it’s  an individual sport, but it’s really a team sport that people don’t necessarily see because everyone’s individual points gets put altogether and then in the end, like the club as a whole, wins either net points or gross points.”

Orca swimmers have set a strong mark for the rest of the season after their first meet in Brooks last weekend.

“At the very first meet that we already had, we already had so many aggregate swimmers,” she said.

“So what that means is they got a lot of points in their individual events and they added up to be the top three swimmers in their age category. So we’ve already had a lot of those swimmers and I think we only had about 40 swimmers at that swim meet. So there’s so much more potential for so many more kids to get medals in the coming up meets.”

Swimmers practice five days a week and head right into meets on the weekends and so coaches have crafted a game plan to keep them focused.

“Well,  a couple things, on Fridays, we have sort of a game focus,” said Armstrong.

“We swim for about half of the practice and then games for the second half (and) just where we get to combine groups, and they get to play games and have fun before the big meet the next day. We also have a few times throughout the season what we call an Orca Cup. So we come together as a team and we actually split off into four different teams, but it’s a mixture of all age groups and they basically just do challenges and games and compete against each other for prizes in the end.”

The Orcas are on a heavy schedule to start the season as they will go back-to -back meets in Pincher Creek and Taber over the next two weekends to finish what will be three weekends in a row to start the season of competition.

“So I guess our focus is just getting through those meets,” said Armstrong.

“You know and doing our best and getting all the way until we can have those couple of weeks off because the swim meets, they do get busy, and they get tiring.”

Swimmers in the club range from four all the way to 15 years old.