by Kim Matthews and Sharon Burns
Twelve-year-old Elizabeth Moore of Sylvan Lake Nauticals, along with coaches Sharon and Trevor Burns attended the Canadian Age Group Championships (national swim meet) July 24-27th in Montreal, Quebec.
For Elizabeth this was her first national level swim meet and Trevor and Sharon’s first national level meet as coaches. What a great experience for all three of them along with the Moore family.
Elizabeth joined the Nautical swim club when she was seven years old and had Sharon as her coach for two years. Sharon taught her the fundamentals of swimming and introduced her to competition.
She moved up through the levels and now has trained under Coach Trevor for the past three year fine tuning her strokes and getting in peak condition. With her determination and the coaching of Trevor and Sharon she is now a national level swimmer.
Elizabeth has qualified for provincials the past three years and qualified this year for the 2013-2014 Western swim meet in New Westminster, B.C. next March. She has also qualified already for 2014 Nationals in Winnipeg, Manitoba next summer.
This was the first time that athletes were required to qualify in a minimum of three events in order to attend the National meet. Elizabeth qualified in seven events, making her one of the top qualifiers in Alberta. She competed in six of the seven events. It was a long meet with great competition and a vast array of weather conditions as an outdoor pool was used for the competition. Swimmers had to deal with cool and windy temperatures to sunny and 30 degrees to pouring rain.
Elizabeth swam the 50m, 100m, 200m breaststroke, 50m and 100m butterfly and 400m individual medley events. She made it into the top 10 finals for the 50m and 100m breaststroke and the 50m butterfly. They were exciting races as the swimmers raced for the finish line with very little distance between first and last place. Elizabeth is now ranked in the top 10 in Canada in 200 and 100m breaststroke and 50m butterfly.
Coach Trevor has watched Elizabeth with her teammates as she now mentors other swimmers and is continually encouraging them to do the best they can in both practice and competition. He said that he was very proud of her accomplishments, proud to be with her at Nationals and is looking forward to the next season. Both he and Elizabeth hope to have company in Winnipeg next year.
Over all, this has been an outstanding season for our small Sylvan Lake swim club. Throughout last year’s season we had lots of firsts. Chase Murdoch qualified for 2012-2013 Western’s in Saskatoon. Chase Murdoch, Amber Carson and Elizabeth Moore all qualify for 2013-2014 Western’s in New Westminster, B.C. and as previously mentioned Elizabeth has qualified for the 2014 summer Age Group Championships (Nationals) in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
We also had five of our up and coming swimmers make it to provincial trials this season for the first time. While at trials Emily Girard and Michael Carson qualified for provincials for their first time. Good luck to all of our swimmers in the 2013-2014 season.