Silver Sharks host mini meet

Posted on: Staff Writer

 Aryssah Stankevitsch     

Times Reporter   
 
The Strathmore Silver Sharks have impressed at their first two meets of the season – the NCSA Fall Invitational from Nov. 9-10, and the Winter Cup Invitational from Nov. 23-24 – but looked forward to hosting the Strathmore Mini Meet on Dec. 7 from 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Strathmore Civic Centre.
“This one is an unofficial meet,” Sharks’ Head Coach Jen Mertz said. “We’re hoping by next season that we can actually host an official meet. We have to build our parents; they have to take training in order to be officials on deck. We’re just in that process, we have quite a few parents on board.”
The Sharks will be using a timing piece donated by the Strathmore Lions to the club.
“This will be the first time that a lot of our competitors are racing,” Mertz said. The juniors did not race at the Fall Invitational or Winter Cup, and the only other junior meet of the season so far was cancelled on Nov. 16 due to weather.
“We do these annually,” Mertz said, of the Strathmore Mini Meet. “This is our winter one, and then we’ve done some in the spring as well. It’s just to give the kids a taste of competition, the younger kids. It’s also a bit of a team-building swim meet for our older swimmers and younger swimmers to mix. Typically they swim at two different times.”
The juniors, aged 5 to 12 years, and seniors, aged 9 to 17 years, have both had the goal of building their swim technique strength this season.
“We spent all of October and most of November really building a strong platform of technical strengths within our club. We’ve actually been quite noticed on deck with the other swim clubs. Now we’re just entering into doing some pretty hard training,” Mertz said.
The club will take a short break over the holidays, and then continue with that intense training in the New Year. Provincial meets begin in February and March.
“It’s going excellent. We had a really strong medal collection when we went to the last two meets,” Mertz said. “We have seen great improvement in our swimmers.”