The Dal Sprint Meet

The Dal Sprint Meet has always been on a Sunday, and always preceded by the Dal Relay Meet. Our club first entered this meet in 2021, and it has taken since then to have enough swimmers to show up on Saturday for the fun day of relays. We could have stopped right there, and this weekend would already have been our most successful. Whereas in previous years we had taken four to five swimmers, this year we traveled to Dalhousie with 11. That is also the same number of teams that traveled from across Nova Scotia and New Brunswick to start off their swim season.

 

We had eight relays on the first day, but there were two that stood out. Part of the reason for that is due to the fact that we had two relays in the same event, the mixed 400m medley. Our ‘B’ relay swam first with Emery Endres '28 earning an early lead with the best backstroke start of the field before smashing the wall with her hand and rookie Laura Napier-Whale '30 taking off the blocks to begin her 100m of breaststroke. Michael Denysenko '25 came all the way from Singapore to show us his speedy butterfly, and going the distance for greatness from Germany is the third rookie on this relay, Leonhard Freiherr Rüdt Von Collenberg '26. These fantastic four wrote into the record books a team record! While the ink was still drying our next four got ready to go. In the ‘A’ relay we had Harvey Hadley ‘27 lead the way in backstroke, Lillian Blois '27 continued in her specialty, breaststroke, rookie Regina Solis Figueroa '27 extended our lead with her excellent butterfly, and Rowan Francis '27 brought us home in his fast freestyle in a new team record. Removing the university teams from the scoreboard was our highest finish of the meet in fifth place. The duo Harvey and Leonhard then teamed with Santiago Ramirez Garrido Toussaint '27 to set a team record in their 3x50m breaststroke.

 

On day two we brought two more swimmers, and everyone had swims to be happy about. Lillian Blois '27 placed sixth in her 50m breaststroke and then removed a heap of time to set a personal best while racing 100m breaststroke to finish eighth among 44. Michael Denysenko ‘25 earned seventh out of 59 racers. Emery Endres '28 had four individual swims and earned two personal bests in her 100m IM and 50m backstroke. Rookie Hyatt Endres '28 returned to the pool for his first swim meet with a speedy 50m freestyle. Rowan Francis '27 had a big day of five events and knocked off a new personal best in his 50m backstroke. Harvey Hadley ‘27 had a solid day swimming to three new bests in his 100m IM, 50m butterfly, and 50m backstroke, finishing fifth, eighth, and fourth, respectively. On a larger team Laura Napier-Whale '30 would have swum relays and individual events only in the U13 category. Instead, 12-year-old Laura swam with the bigger kids in her 100m IM, 50m breaststroke, and 50m freestyle. Santiago Ramirez Garrido Toussaint '27 wanted to swim as much as he could, so he signed up for the maximum of five events: 100m IM and freestyle, and 50m backstroke, breaststroke and freestyle. He slept well that night. Leonhard Freiherr Rüdt Von Collenberg '26 had his best event in the 100m freestyle as he placed a strong 20^th place finish among 60 competitors. Rookie Ewan Shaw '30 made his KES debut and first-ever swim meet in the 50m backstroke, 50m freestyle and 100m freestyle. Most swimmers fear the butterfly events as the most difficult. Probably because they are. Regina Solis Figueroa '27 runs into danger. Among her four events, in the 100m butterfly she competed her best earning a 7th place finish.

 

A small group of Highlanders will head to Greenwood on October 19 for a distance meet before joining with the larger herd at Acadia on October 27.