News
Congratulations to Nicolaas Dekker and Head Coach Robert Pettifer for Breaking the BC 15-17 Boys 100m fly record at Canada Cup Toronto 54.00 (25.56 / 28.44)
Last weekend, the Richmond Rapids brought 75 swimmers to Langley to compete in the Langley Olympians Short Course Invitational. For the first time this year, the Rapids were in a championship-style, heats and finals environment. The top eight swimmers in each event and age group returned in the evening to race again. This is the setup for nearly all major meets, including BC AA and AAA Provincial Championships and Age Group Nationals. And like those meets, it took good swims in the morning to come back at night. The Rapids...
The Richmond Rapids Swim Club had another weekend of racing, with the age group program heading to UBC for a sprint event, and the National Development squad traveling to Victoria for the Swim BC Senior Circuit meet. UBC’s event, hosted by the Vancouver Pacific Swim Club, was entirely focused on short distance sprints, either 50 or 100 meters. All swimmers competed in nine events over the weekend, and were ranked according to aggregate times. “There’s an element of fun to this meet,” said Head Age Group Coach Dennis Silva. “Not...
After some well deserved time off, the Richmond Rapids Swim Club is back in the water and racing. Competition began with two regional level meets - one hosted by Simon Fraser Aquatics and attended by the program’s 14 and unders, the other hosted by the Pacific Sea Wolves and attended by the club’s senior level swimmers. Most of the younger swimmers were in a familiar environment, though it had been months since they had raced. “The focus here was setting or re-setting the tone for competition,” says Coach Drew McClure....
Award Winners from the 2012-2013 Season Listed below are all of the award winners from last season. The montage video can be downloaded here. Music by Mutemath. Thanks again to everyone who came! -Drew Long Time Service Award - Tanja Paterson - for 20+ years of coaching with the Rapids Most Improved Awards: Given for total time drops in all events for the sesaon. Highest total seconds dropped wins. 10&U Girls Runner Up - Cecilia Soroco Winner - Amanda McCallum 10&U Boys Runner Up - Dimitri Volchkov Winner -...
What Parents Should Say as Their Kids Perform By Tim Elmore In my work at Growing Leaders, we enjoy the privilege of serving numerous NCAA and professional sports teams each year. After meeting with hundreds of coaches and athletes, I noticed an issue kept surfacing in our conversations. Both the student-athlete and the coach were trying to solve the same problem. What was that problem? The parents of the student-athletes. You may or may not believe this, but even in Division One athletics, parents stay engaged with their child’s sport,...
This July, the Rapids sent four swimmers to Montreal to compete at Canadian Age Group Nationals. This was the final event of the season for the club, who had been training in Montreal for over a week, while Rapids swimmers Brandon De Costa, Nicolaas Dekker and Morgan Mark were competing at Canadian Senior Nationals. Brandon de Costa won his first two individual AGN medals, both in backstroke disciplines. The 50 backstroke was the crowning achievement – not only his first medal, but a gold medal and national title. De Costa...
This July, the Rapids sent 39 swimmers to UBC to compete at BC’s AAA Long Course Provincial Championships. In an unprecedented and dramatic conclusion, the Richmond Rapids finished in second, the highest ranking the club has ever reached. First was a striking 11 points away. To put this in perspective, the winner of any event earns 50 points from their team. Eighth place? 11. The Rapids finished Thursday’s finals session in seventh overall, and slowly started to climb up the rankings, due to huge efforts from their athletes. Morgan Mark,...
The second half of our long-course season showed off big results for our regional and AA-level swimmers, as well as impressive work by all of our volunteers. Both Rapids-hosted West Coast Open and LMR Champs were screaming successes, as some of the largest in the history of those meets. This is due in huge part to the amazing work of our volunteers, who helped us run an amazingly smooth double-ended long course WCO, and another fantastic LMR Champs. Adding to those successes was another Rapids LMR victory for the team....
Hello Rapids!, We are still looking for more volunteers for LMR Champs this weekend. This is the last opportunity to earn some major Parent Participation Points for the season. The job sign up on the website has been reopened for one more day. So if you would like to sign up please do so. We are in need of safety marshalls for warm up, lane timers, food room helpers and stroke & turn officials for just about all of the sessions. Below is an updated timeline for the meet. Volunteers...
