Great results in two sports make it a summer to remember

Isobel Speiran spent her summer in the pool and on the court, finishing with a perfect individual swimming record and a successful tennis season.

Swimming for the Elmira Aquaducks, now called the Woolwich Wave, she placed first in all of her individual events in Fergus, Kincardine, Elmira, and Wilmot.

“This is pretty awesome,” dad Scott Speiran said. “She went the entire swimming season this year, didn’t lose an individual race. That’s breaststroke, butterfly, and front crawl, didn’t lose in four swim meets, and won the overall individual under eight championship for southwestern regional, which is pretty awesome for an eight-year-old girl.”

Scott says before she started this season they talked about not worrying about what place she came in, but focusing on setting personal bests. It’s safe to say she followed that plan.

She started swimming when she was four, but only began doing it competitively last summer.

“I was doing swimming lessons and then swimming lessons was really easy, so I perfected my stroke at the time of about level six, and then my mom heard about the Aquaducks, so we decided to watch a session. And then I decided to join,” Isobel said.

She finished second overall last year, in her first year of competitive swimming. She’ll start her third season with the team this October.

“Last year I didn’t get many firsts at all, I got maybe one or two all season. And then this year a couple of the girls moved out into the 9- and 10-year-old group and things got a little easier,” Isobel said.

Isobel says her favorite stroke is butterfly because it’s harder than the others and she likes to challenge herself. But her best stroke is front crawl. She usually has to wait six or seven seconds at the end of the race before the second place swimmer finishes.

“She missed out on a 1985 individual record by 39 one hundredths of a second.  It’s been a pretty amazing summer swimming,” Scott said.

As a year-round swimmer, she starts out the year with one night of swimming lessons and one of competitive each week, increasing to two nights of competitive later in the year.

She also has been playing tennis for four years. She won the most improved female tennis player award at the Southampton Tennis Club this year, which includes players up to 17 years old. Scott notes the head coach, Jackie Ross, also won the award years ago when she was just a player.

“She plays tennis every day in the summer time, and it’s pretty cool to see how she’s improving. Right now she competes with the 11 and 12-year-old girls and boys,” Scott said.

Scott jokes he’d like her to get into golf too.

Isobel and her brother Ian also won the singles 10 and under tennis championship earlier this summer.

Isobel says she loves how competitive both sports are, but Scott says there’s more than that to the appeal.

“They’re both competitive, but you meet a lot of new friends, and have a lot of fun doing it,” Scott said. “There are a lot of good friendships that are formed.”