On Wednesday, February 27, the UCC Junior Swim team - Years 5-8 - traveled to the Markham Pan Am pool in the beginnings of a snowstorm. The boys were excited, and looked forward to competing. The day was filled with amazing individual races, super-incredible relays, and lots of personal bests. After four long months of training, a couple of swim meets, and a mammoth amount of snow and cold, the UCC team successfully captured six championships - U11, U12, U13, U14, Open U14, and OVERALL Boys.
We would like to thank all of the parent volunteers who helped out at our three swim meets. Many thanks to our team parents, Maria Karakoulas, Robin Richardson, and Edith Cheung, who organized our end-of-season team parties. Success such as this can only be achieved with phenomenal teamwork, support, and cooperation. Special thanks as always to the coaching team:
Ms. Kanga, Mr. Labancz, Ms. Trelford, Ms. Hui Bon Hoa, and Mr. Williams
We hope to see all of the boys back next year. Congratulations to all of the swimmers, parents, and coaches. You rocked it! V
Years 5,6, 7 and 8 boys travelled to the PanAm Pool in Markham. It is an incredibly modern facility with a full 50meter 10 lane pool. The boys warmed up on the West Side and began their events. The first race of the day started out with an incredible 100m IM Medley where Pearse Hanna (Backcrawl), Derek Gu (Breaststroke), Bo Dong (Butterfly) and Christian Ciraco(Freestyle) demonstrated an incredible comeback victory narrowly out-touching Bayview Glen by under 4 tenths of a second. The Year 8 teams dominated the 200 Medley Relays placing 1st and 2nd respectively with only 4 seconds between them. However, to demonstrate their strength, they put a 15-second gap between 2nd and 3rd place. We had several athletes at various age levels that shone. Bo Dong (U11), Adrian Mak (U12) and Nate Nakka (U13) all finished at the top of the podium in their respective 50meter Freestyle events with Youssef El Nagar (U14) being narrowly out-touched by under 2 tenths of a second for a proud second place finish. We must also take a moment to recognize that during a few of our events some of our athletes experienced some technical difficulties with turns or strokes resulting in disqualifications. With our growth mindset in place, we take these experiences as positive learning opportunities. We have plenty of time to work on improving our strokes and turns before the CISAA Finals.