Younger Aquanauts get feet wet in Dryden

The future of the Fort Frances Aquanauts looks very bright.
Three of the team’s youngest members competed at a meet in Dryden over the weekend and as has been the case with most of the club’s swimmers so far this year, the results were excellent.
Katja Sutherland, 11, posted personal bests in each of the three events she swam.
The eldest of the three Aquanauts competing in Dryden, Sutherland shaved four seconds off both her 100m freestyle time and her 50m butterfly time—in addition to posting a remarkable 21-second improvement on her previous best-ever time in the 100m individual medley.
Meanwhile, Levi Rittau, nine, and Michael Higgins-Albanese, eight, matched Sutherland’s strong performance in the pool.
Rittau took first place, followed closely by Higgins-Albanese, in the boys’ 10 and under 25m breaststroke.
The pair also posted strong results in the 50m backstroke (Rittau took second while Higgins-Albanese was eighth) and the 50m freestyle (Rittau placed seventh with Higgins-Albanese finishing 10th).
The strong showing—especially from Rittau and Higgins-Albanese, who are just getting their feet wet in the world of competitive swimming—pleased Aquanauts’ head coach Tristan Hutton to no end.
“I was very pleased,” he enthused.
“It was an eye-opener for them [Rittau and Higgins-Albanese],” Hutton added. “They got to see how people who know a little more about how to swim do it and they got to measure their skills against other kids their age.”
Hutton is hoping the pair’s experience in Dryden only will serve to further motivate them during training.
“There wasn’t too much pressure for the young ones but enough to maybe spike their interest to work a little harder,” he reasoned.
“I like to bring kids to that type of meet to see how some of the kids their age are doing so they can understand what they can accomplish,” he added.
“Monkey see, monkey do basically.”
The first-year Aquanauts’ coach also was happy with Sutherland’s performance over the weekend.
As the veteran swimmer of the group, Hutton was looking for her to improve her personal best times—and she did not disappoint.
“She hadn’t been able to go to Prairie Winter, so this was an opportunity for her to best her times so far and she did very well,” Hutton said.