Elmira District Secondary School’s swim team wrapped up their season last week with both male and female swimmers competing well enough to attend the regional meet, but falling short of heading to provincials.
Eight swimmers from EDSS swam in the Central Western Ontario Secondary Schools Association (CWOSSA) meet in Wilmot on Feb. 15.
“It went really well. All the kids got some excellent personal best times, but EDSS doesn’t have anyone moving on to OFSAA,” said coach Pam Germann.
She says they typically have a number of students who make it to the CWOSSA swim meet each year. Last season, one Elmira swimmer made it to the Ontario Federation of School Athletic Associations meet.
Elmira was represented at CWOSSA by their open girls’ medley team, their senior boys’ freestyle relay team and two female swimmers from the medley relay, who had individual events as well.
To make it to that meet swimmers had to participate in Waterloo County Secondary School Athletics Association meets and either come first in their event or have a qualifying time at the WCSSAA meet, which was held before Christmas.
EDSS hosted three meets this season at the Woolwich Memorial Centre, which they used to get seed times for the WCSSAA meet on Dec. 20, as well as for the new swimmers to get used to a racing environment.
The team was focused on individual goals, improving their times from meet to meet. Just from the first to the second meet Germann says she saw many swimmers making significant improvement.
“I think we had a really inclusive year where people felt really comfortable on the team and really had an enjoyable season this year, wanting to come back to practices even after they were not moving on to the next meet,” Germann said.
She commends Grade 9 swimmer Grace Parker and Grade 10 swimmer Carmen Read, who both excelled in their personal events this season.
Germann notes she’s proud of the entire team’s efforts this season.
“I’m hopeful that the positive atmosphere that we had with our swim team will have lots of returning swimmers as well as some fresh swimmers out next year.”
