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Sylvan Lake Nauticals bring home banner from provincial meet

The Sylvan Lake Nauticals swim team has recently won the small team banner while at Provincials in Calgary.
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BIG WIN – The Sylvan Lake Nauticals swim team met in Calgary for a provincial swim meet where they won the small team banner.

The Sylvan Lake Nauticals swim team has recently won the small team banner while at Provincials in Calgary.

Local swimmers Isaac Bahler, 11, and Zoe DeJonge, 12, both placed in the finals while at provincials.

Bahler was also the top male in his age group.

Winning the small team banner for provincials is a first for the team and has the whole team excited.

Even though this is the first time for the team, head development coach for the Nauticals, Sharon Burns, said it wasn’t necessarily a surprised that the two swimmers won.

“Both of them are very strong swimmers and they are top of the province in all their competitions,” Burns said.

Both swimmers had seven events to swim in.

“They did best times in most of their events but they didn’t take it for granted,” Burns said. “They worked very hard.”

In order to be successful, the swimmers commit to intense and high quality training. This includes swimming between 3,500 and 4,000 metres a day.

The swimmers from the Sylvan Lake Nauticals swim team have had to train in Innisfail, Lacombe and Red Deer due to the aquatic centre in town not being available for use.

This has put a damper on the number of swimmers involved in the town’s swim team. Last year there were 135 swimmers - this year there are 33.

The swim team is still going strong and Burns said the team wants people to know that they are still out there and working very hard.

“We are looking forward to getting back into our facility and building up our team again and onto the success of this year,” said Burns.“The fact that we have been out of our facility has been challenging, but we are still accomplishing a lot and doing really well and the swimmers are still working very hard.”

Burns said they are taking the team to Victoria at the end of April for a swim meet, which will be the end of the season for some of the swimmers as some like to do other sports in the summer.

reporter@sylvanlakenews.com