Staff
The culmination of a long competitive swimming season will come to a head this week for local Fort Frances Aquanaut Donovan Taylor.
The 15-year-old will compete at the Canadian Age Group Championships beginning tomorrow in Montreal.
“His best ranking is 21st in his 200 back, and 24th in his 50 fly, but half of a second [faster] would put him up in the top six in that, so it’s really close,” FFAST coach and Donovan’s mom, Dawnn, said.
He recently attended the 2009 Man./Sask. long course championships in Winnipeg just two days past his 15th birthday—where he competed against mostly older competition in 10 events and took gold in the 50m fly, as well as bronze in the 100m butterfly, the 100m backstroke, the 200m IM, and the 400m IM.
Taylor spent the four days leading into this week’s nationals training in Thunder Bay with Thunderbolts’ coach Stu McLean—which Dawnn thinks will go a long way, especially considering the limited practice time available to him here during the summer months.
“I dropped him off Saturday, and he had two sessions Saturday with Stu, and then another session Sunday, and [Monday] they swam in an outdoor pool to get some training for that [like the one in Montreal], so he’s had some intensive training over the last four days,” coach Taylor said.
Taylor will get started tomorrow in the 200m IM and 100m free tomorrow before having a day off to regroup on Friday.
He will then hit the pool in the 50m fly, 100m fly, 400m IM, 50m free, and 200m backstroke on the weekend.
“I pulled him out of his 100 back [on Friday] because I haven’t liked it lately,” Taylor noted. “It hasn’t been as productive as I’d like to see it and we need to change his stroke a little bit.
“Stu is going to work on that, but you can only do so much [in four days],” Taylor noted.
The initial plan was for Taylor to skip the nationals this year and then compete in both the Ontario Games and nationals (which will be in Winnipeg) next summer—but he had the desire to test the waters this year despite a back injury over the winter that set him back.
“He wanted to see what it’s like and feel the burn,” coach Taylor lauded. “He’ll have a little downtime here the rest of the summer and start up again in the fall.”
