Competitive swimming is the core of our club, and what we build our focus around. It is our belief that everyone can enjoy success in sport and through this develop life skills they can apply to other areas. Our competitive program has three tiers; Regional, Provincial and National.
Regional group swimmers must be able to swim the 200m Individual Medley in less than four minutes. This qualifies them for the LMR (Lower Mainland Regional) level swim meets. The regional group focuses on learning the finer points of training (learning to train) like using the pace clock, swimming in a lane with other athletes etc. They maintain their focus on the individual medley events as they work their way up the Swim BC ’A’, ’AA’, and ’AAA’ cuts to qualify for the BC Provincial Championships held each year at the end of February (for the short course - 25m pool, winter meet) and the beginning of July (for the long course - 50m pool, summer meet).
Once the swimmers achieve their Provincial "AAA" qualifying times, and have demonstrated the skills required to move forward, they are eligible for the Provincial training group. In this group they begin to train for fitness (training to train) while still focusing on the medley they expand to more frequently include the 200m stroke events, the 400m individual medley and the distance (400m, 800m and 1500m) freestyle events. Openwater options can be explored in the summer as well. As they improve they begin to work their way towards the Swimming Canada Age-Group National Qualifying times, and SNC Western Qualifying times. As they progress to these meets where they will be competing against the best swimmers their age in Canada they may transition into the National group.
Our top training group - the National group - consists of girls who have two or more SNC Western cuts, and boys who have two or more Western or Age-Group national cuts. These swimmers are now training to compete with their weekly, monthly and seasonal cycles preparing them for specific meets at the National or Junior International level. They must be committed to swimming at this point as their training is extensive and varied.
The 2010 - 2011 Group Descriptions for the competitive groups are available for download; Regional group description, Provincial group description, National group description.
You can register now, detailed instructions are available here. For more information please contact our registrars at registrar@winskilldolphins.org.
