Lucas Punkari
With only four swimmers competing at the Golden Plains Invitational in Winnipeg over the weekend, for the Fort Frances Aquanauts to place in the top 10 would be a major accomplishment.
But to come away with a fourth-place showing out the of 13 teams that made up the field is something Aquanauts’ head coach Dawnn Taylor is extremely proud of.
“It’s just simply phenomenal,” she enthused.
“We went in there with what we called the ‘fast four,’ and we ended up being the top team with less than 15 swimmers there,” Taylor noted.
“And the teams that were in front of us had about 40 competitors on each [one].”
Leading the charge for the Aquanauts was Donovan Taylor, who earned seven gold medals en route to capturing the high point trophy in the boys’ 15-and-over division, along with setting seven qualifying times for next year’s nationals.
“He had one fourth in the 200m freestyle, but it was a calculated fourth-place finish,” Coach Taylor explained.
“When he had the race on Sunday, he still had to run his 200m I.M. and his 100m butterfly, which he really wanted to go for the top time in those events,” she reasoned.
“So he did a very steady 200m free and didn’t really push it or anything like that.
“And then he went in and ate up the 200m I.M. and then went down to a 58.84 in the 100m fly,” she added.
Adam Stromberg also performed strongly in the boys’ 12-and-under division, finishing up the meet with a gold-medal showing in the 50m freestyle to go along with five silver and two bronze medals.
“His time in the 50m free [28.58] is now the top time in Canada for his age group,” Taylor noted.
“Adam also had a great battle in his 200m freestyle, where he swam a 2:20.82, but the winner just edged him out with a 2:20.81.
“The crowd was just going crazy—it was like a UFC fight but without the fighting,” she joked.
Levi Rittau and Regan Danylchuk also represented the Aquanauts at the meet, with both of them picking up fifth-place showings in the 50m freestyle for the boys’ 13-14 age group and the 100m freestyle in the girls’ 12-and-under divisions, respectively.
“Both of them made it to a number of finals,” Taylor said.
“Levi was able to convert a lot of his times from the short-course pool to the long course that we raced out there, and Regan put up some solid times,” she added.
While Taylor and her son, Donovan, now are preparing to head to Halifax for a tri-meet next week, the rest of the Aquanauts will be getting ready for the May Invitational in Thunder Bay at month’s end.
“We are already getting tuned up for that,” she stressed.
“The biggest revelation from this weekend is that the program is right on course to go into the May [Invitational],” Taylor remarked.
“And while are club swimmers don’t have the luxury of practising in a long-distance pool like the one they’ll be swimming at in Thunder Bay, they’re well-prepared for it,” she reasoned.