News
The following article was written by Andrea Phillpotts, a writer, teacher, and Rapids parent. A Chinese translation is included below. The parent was huge, easily over 6 feet tall, leaning over the bleacher guard rail and projecting his immense voice across the SFU pool to where his child was racing, peppering it with whistles and chirps. He wasn’t a Rapids parent and I didn’t recognize him. I can’t remember what his instructions were to his child but his whole delivery was intense. Like back away intense. Not only myself but...
Olympian Noemie Thomas came into Watermania to work on turns with the PAG & RD Black groups. Noemie will be making several more visits to work with the Rapids swimmers during the season!
Nicolaas Dekker and Emily have also been named as finalists for the Richmond Sports awards for their accomplishments in 2014. Both athletes had outstanding seasons which included Emily qualifying for Can Am Para Swimming Championships and Nicolaas who made his first National team and competed for Canada at the Junior Pan Pacific Championships. This brings a total of 6 swimmers (Adrian Hising, Kevin Ye, Arvin Chua, Alex Ball, Emily De Boer & Nic Dekker) from our club being named finalists for Richmond Sports Awards. The full press release from...
Richmond Rapids graduate Nicolaas Dekker has been selected as a Swimming Canada carded athlete for 2014-2015. For the next fiscal year, Dekker will receive top-tier funding to train and compete, which includes fully funded training trips, travel meets, and any needed equipment, and racing suits. National level carding is only given to a select group of high-performance athletes. Recipients are expected to improve at international levels for the duration of their carding, which is reviewed annually for renewal. What made Dekker a strong pick for Swimming Canada was not a...
Recently, at the annual BC Coaches Conference and Awards Banquet, the Richmond Rapids were named Club of the Year for 2014. The accolade was earned through steadily increasing performances in recent years, including the club’s first provincial championship title. Throughout the 2013-2014 season, the club continued to elevate performance, regularly placing athletes on major teams, from provincial to the Canadian Junior National team. The Rapids set four provincial records and one national record, the Boys 14-and-under medley relay. Membership grew to an all-time high, with over 400 athletes through a...
Rapids para-swimmer, Emily De Boer, was selected to attend the Swim BC Para-Swimming Camp held next weekend at Watermania. The three-day camp not only includes several workouts, but also sessions on nutrition and sport psychology. The camp culminates in a sanctioned time-trial, as an opportunity to get in some focused racing early in the season. De Boer’s improving performances through last year’s long course provincial champs has put her on the regular list of attendees, which will include para-athletes from all over BC. This will be De Boer’s second attendance...
Though the season has barely begun, the Richmond Rapids have already had five members named to local qualifying teams. Last week , Jerry Liu, Adrian Hsing, Wendy Yang, and Alex Ball were selected to the BC Tier-1 Provincial Team. In a change-up from previous years, those selected to the team will represent and receive support from BC for the duration of the 2014-2015 season. Liu, Hsing, Yang, and Ball were selected by achieving a “Junior On-Track Time” for Finals, meaning that assuming continued development, they are “on-track” to make a...
Eleven members of the Richmond Rapids Swim Club recently competed in Canadian Age Group Championships in Winnipeg, a five-day national competition. The vast majority of the team was under 16 years old, almost all of them making a debut. Adrian Hsing, Rich Rakchtis, David Ng, Michael Ge, Dini McIver, Max Schaffler, Amanda McCallum, and Ethan Chan were all competing at Age Group Nationals for the first time. Dini McIver, having recently achieved the requisite three time standards to attend the meet, was seeded well outside the top eight....
For the second year in a row, the Richmond Rapids are runners-up in the overall team standings at BC AAA Long Course Provincials. The men’s team was again first, a trend that has lasted for several consecutive seasons. The journey started two weeks prior with BC AAs in Victoria, where eight Rapids athletes competed. This was the first championship event for 10-year-olds Sarah Crawfod and Vivian Liang, who had the opportunity to learn how to race over three full days. Liang walked away with a bronze in the 100...
In her career-first swim meet, Richmond Rapids paraswimmer Emily De Boer has made the qualification standards to compete at this year’s Can-Ams, a paraswimming-focused event with top-level teams from all over the world. At Rapids-hosted West Coast Open, De Boer achieved the time in the 100 breaststroke, while also achieving the time standards for BC Provincials in both the 100 breaststroke and 100 backstroke. Since the athletic classification of paraswimmers is a rigorous, multi-step process, De Boer had actually been training for three seasons before she was able to post...
