Swim season opens tomorrow

Local competitive swimmers will be back in action tomorrow afternoon with their first meet in Dryden.
“I’m excited,” said Dawnn Taylor, a coach with the Fort Frances Aquanauts.
“It’s exciting to see what everybody’s going to put out there, what kind of bar they’re going to set out for themselves to start out with,” she added.
The Aquanauts will take 10 swimmers to Dryden, including eight-year-old newcomer Annika Kjerulf.
Meanwhile, the local Cyclone club will be sending five swimmers there.
“We’ve got a lot of kids who are involved in hunting, and these are the [only] ones that are available for the weekend,” Cyclone coach Debbie Murray noted this morning.
The five are all seasoned swimmers—and all girls. “We’ll just have a girls’ weekend,” Murray joked.
Tomorrow’s meet is a qualifier for the upcoming ScotiaBank Prairie Winter invitational in Winnipeg on Nov. 29-Dec. 2.
It will boast a relatively small field because of a competing meet in Thunder Bay that will split the turnout of local swimmers.
Taylor said the first meet of the season is important for young swimmers to get used to competitive waters.
“[And] for our experienced swimmers, it’s getting them back into that race format again, getting them into the routine before they get into competitive meets,” she added.