Swim Team

Tabyas Sutherland

Story starts here. 

Both the junior and senior swim teams had podium finishes at the Coquitlam championship on October 14. The junior team placed third and the senior team took second. Mark Tustin, coach, and PE teacher is happy with the team and hopes to see as many students as possible come out for our season next year. According to Mr. Tustin these kids on the swim team helped with the success, special recognition to Lucas Kim grade 10, Kevin Kong grade 10, loan Kim grade 9, Justin Jung grade 11, and Rumi Hayes grade 11 for setting five individual and two relay team course records. 

Amanda Knuttila grade 11 is in the swim team and she says that they all work very hard and wake up very early for practice it starts at 6:30, Amanda usually wakes up at 5:45 and gets ready and gets to the pool around 6:10, she has been swimming since she was 3. It takes dedication to be on the swim team waking up early, balancing your school with swimming. In swimming here are four different swimming events butterfly stroke, backstroke, breast stroke and freestyle, Amandas favorite is breast stroke because she is most fast with it and her least favorite is butterfly stroke because it takes the most energy and she is slowest with this it is the least fun. Amanda is happy with this year’s swim team there are some new people but they are fast and Amanda hope’s they will push themselves to go to provincials like they did the previous year.

On October 26 Gleneagle’s swim team competed at the Fraser North Championship, according to Mark Tustin the team did very good. The boys got 1st place in 5 relays and 1 individual, the one who did the individual and won 1st place is named Laon Kim and he smashed the course record by 6.5 seconds in the 200meter individual medley and he is only in grade 9.

Swimmers advancing and earning special recognition are Laon Kim, Justin Jung, Lucas Kim, Kevin Kong, Yeonwoo Choi grade 10, Martine Durante grade 12 and Ian Briad grade 11 collectively smashed 5 course records in relay events by 3 to 7 seconds for most, and the other by a whole 29 seconds. In the end the team result is the girls and the boy team combined finished 4th out 17 competitive teams the swimmers contributing to the team’s success include Isabella Murphey Grade 9, Harold Liu Grade 9, Lucas Kim, Vladimir Garcia grade 11 and Tomas Levanchini Grade 9. Swimmers advancing to the BC high school Championship include Amanda Knuttlia, Anita Cheng grade 11, Megan Clark grade 11, Claudia Cons, grade 10, Olivia Cabo grade 10, Mark Vetoshkin grade 9, Rumi Hayes Micah Yao grade 10 Howie Ma grade 9 and Bobby Nguyen grade 9.  

Mr. Tustin said that the swim team has been doing very good but does not want to jinx it, after being asked if he thinks the swim team will go to provincials Mark Tustin says I would not say anything so bold but they are in a good position to go to provincials looking at the previous swim meet. The swimming team only has one more swim meet at the provincials championships on November 18 and 19.