Western Canadian Championships Day 3 Finals

24 March 2024 (Winnipeg, MB) - The third day was another one of the quick ones with plenty of action and gamesmanship going on between a couple of teams - it made for an exciting day.

First podium finish of the evening session came in the 100m butterfly with Rebecca Smith racing in the open (16&O) final. The meet record was set last year in 59.59 and Smith was looking for a fast one before she jetted out of town (her flight home was 90 minutes later)! In prelims she was 1:01.21 and out in 28.62 to the 50. At night she dropped an extra second on that front end out in 27.68 with a better back-end as well home in 31.86 for a 59.54 win. It was the championship record by 5/100ths of a second!

Next was the 50m breaststroke and after her win the night before in the 100m event Abigail Clark was rarin’ to go in this one too! She qualified first in the morning with a 33.40 and, mind you, this was a senior or open event and not a junior category race (all the stroke 50’s are swum open in the finals) so it was going to be quite a field. The top-4 end up being separated by 7/10ths in a tight race that saw Clark power past everyone on the 2nd half of the 50 winning in 32.89.

At this point in the season, if this meet is not your peek competition, you will see that we do have swimmers trying out or refining race strategy as they prep for, in this case, Olympic Trials. If Westerns is the highest level you have qualified to so far then that is a different case. In the particular case of Parker Deshayes he was working some front end speed in the morning (1:01/1:13) and then putting together an all-together different swim at night (1:02/1:05). Parker qualified third after his 2:14.71 in prelims so still had a middle lane to keep track of all the action and then swam a balanced race at night where he won by 2 seconds in 2:07.85. Cole Pratt was doing the same thing with his swims - out in the morning to the 100 in 57.67 (he has only been faster a couple of times) and pacing to 2:10. At night it was looking to see what that speed would be at the 150m mark and with a 1:30.47 split he was pretty solid before swimming down to a 2:06.07 final time for the win as well.

Right after the 200m backstroke were the relays.

The girls relay - they pulled a sneak attack by swimming Team Alpha in the prelims while they could still use Ingrid Wilm and Rebecca Smith as a part of their crew; the two of them had to split for the airport at night so the team took advantage of them being around in the morning. The Cascade crew knew they had to put down something pretty good to break the monopoly at play with LOSC having won the 1st two relays of the weekend so they did it all in the morning. Solid four splits by all four girls and just over the meet record (4:14.20 - set by Cascade in 2016 right here at the Pan AM pool in fact: Brooklynn Snodgrass, Bronwyn Paslowski, Taryn Pratt and Paige Bergen) but fast enough to put the fear of Thor (gudinne torden) in the rest of the field watching and prepping for the evening. At night, try as they might, LOSC couldn’t get down to where Cascade was in the AM - a valiant effort in 4:17.92 but just shy!

Cascade Girls

CASC “A”                     CASC “B”                        CASC “D”                       CASC “C”

4:15.66     GOLD          4:33.09         9th             4:48.12        28th             4:48.37  30th

Ingrid        1:01.30        Brooklyn.     1:09.26       Jolie            1:13.18        Layla    1:10.70

Abigail      1:13.77        Camryn        1:18.08      Meredith      1:21.01        Madi    1:18.09

Rebecca   1:00.82       Isabella        1:06.92      Jenna           1:10.36        Lilah     1:17.80

Elleigh       59.77         Chloe            58.83        Keira             1:03.57       Lydia    1:01.78

The men’s team, swimming about 10 minutes after the 200 back for Cole and Parker, and most having swum earlier in the session as well were looking for another relay win - just to stay one up on the girls team who had just tied them for relay gold a heat earlier! Turns out the men’s team from LOSC had tried to pull the same stunt that the CASC girls did by swimming their top team in the morning and not at night with the rest of ‘em so there was not tight head to head match with the Langley boys. Instead though the quartet which also include Louie and Yuri crushed it and took home their second relay title (2-1 for the boys) on the weekend.

Cascade Boys

CASC “A”                       CASC “B”                        

3:51.97   GOLD             4:02.32       6th                     

Cole        57.84             Jonah       1:00.86

Louie      1:06.74          Jaxon        1:09.33

Parker    58.06             Ricardo      58.56

Yuri         49.33            Broden       53.57

Team Scores at the end of Day 3

Women

1. LOSC 781.5

2. CASC 606

3. CDSC 434.5

4. KISU 366

5. WD 277

Men

1. LOSC 1,235

2. CASC 699

3. EKSC 423

4. KAJ 360

5. UMAN 255

Combined (Banner Title Race)

1. LOSC 2,016.5

2. CASC 1,305

3. KAJ 633

4. EKSC 580

5. GPP 522

Other finals results

400 Free

Elleigh Wise 4:30.02 9th PB New Oly Trials Jr Cut

Keira Kennedy 7th 4:37.30

Isabellą Korczewski 4:37.04 11th 

Layla Medic 4:37.56 12th

100 Fly

Jason Yang 59.71 11th PB

Ricardo Parra Hernandez 58.42 8th PB

50 Breast

Maddy Connell 34.17 11th PB

Thomas Pratsch 29.56 5th

200 Back

Brooklyn Avey 29.11 14th PB

Ricardo Parra Hernandez 26.34 8th (Under old PB and prelims PB 26.14)

What we missed earlier!

The girls 4x100m FR on night one broke the club record in the open age category for the event!

Team “A”lpha                                          

3:49.72      SILVER

Elleigh       59.15   

Chloe        59.00   

Ingrid        56.71   

Rebecca   54.86