The Richmond Rapids Swim Club sent 75 swimmers to the Fraser Valley last week to compete at the Langley Olympians Short Course Invitational.
For the first time this season, the Rapids were in a championship-style, heats and finals environment. The top eight swimmers in each event and age group returned in the evening to race again.
This is the set-up for nearly all major meets, including B.C. AA and AAA Championships and Age Group Nationals. And like those meets, it took good swims in the morning to come back at night. The Rapids had to be on their game, and they were. The team racked up 136 finals swims over the two-day event.
So what makes the difference in finals swims? Coach Drew McClure looks for things the athlete can change.
"In this kind of setup, I'm looking for improvement of an aspect of their race from the morning," explained McClure. "I'm not expecting to see anything like an increase in fitness or technical ability - there hasn't been enough time. What I want is for the athlete to fix a mistake from their first swim, whether technical or tactical, that they have control over. New mistakes are also very welcome."
This was also the first event of the year with a full order of events, with many the Rapids hadn't swum yet this season.
Head Age Group Coach Dennis Silva was satisfied with much of the skill conversion from practice to performance. It's great to start out strong and controlled in practice, but it matters little if that attribute can't be deployed during a race. The Rapids swimmers did a solid job of applying their work.
"This is about the best I've ever seen our athletes look at this point in the season. The work they've put in on technique was certainly showing," said Silva.
Top three finishers are listed below. Coming up soon for the Rapids is their annual FastSwim Classic, hosted at Watermania. For more information on the Richmond Rapids Swim Club, visit richmondrapids.com.
50 Freestyle: Nini Weng -1st, Alex Ball -1st, Michael Jakac-Sinclair -1st, David Ng -3rd.
100 Backstroke: Adrian Hsing -1st, Matthew Crawford -2nd, Cecilia Soroco -3rd, RunQian Gong -3rd, Ethan Chan -3rd. 100 Breaststroke: Michael Ge -1st, Brandon Crawford -2nd. 200 Breaststroke: David Ng -1st, Michael Ge -2nd, Tony Zeng -2nd, Rich Rakchtis -3rd.
100 Butterfly: Benjamin Zhou -1st, Cecilia Soroco -2nd, Lionel Han -2nd, Will Dekker -3rd, Nic Qu -3rd.
100 Freestyle: Cecilia Soroco -2nd, Alex Ball -2nd, Nini Weng -3rd.
200 Butterfly: Dini McIver -2nd, Matthew Crawford -2nd, Arvin Chua -2nd, Jeremy Fung -3rd, Ben Zhuo -3rd.
50 Breaststroke: RunQian Gong -2nd. 200 IM: RunQian Gong -2nd, Ethan Chan -3rd, Rich Rakchtis -3rd, Max Schaffler -3rd.
400 Freestyle: Ethan Chan -2nd, Adrian Hsing -3rd. 200 Backstoke: Matthew Crawford -2nd, Adrian Hsing -2nd, Jerry Liu -2nd.
200 Freestyle : Adrian Hsing -2nd. 50 Butterfly: Jean-Paul Low -3rd.
