After a challenging swim meet in Creston two weekends ago where the Nelson Neptunes finished in third place, the team sure fought back, trained their hardest brought up their spirits, and rocked the pool in Colville, Wash., this past weekend.
The Neptunes won the meet by 400 points. This is the first “A” meet the powerhouse Castlegar Aquanauts haven’t won in over two years.
This is also the first meet win for the Nelson Neptunes since possibly 2010 or 2011. Coach Cynthia Pfeiffer was shocked with the results, especially with having such a small team this year and with only five boys on the team.
“We really do deserve to win a meet. Our team works as a group to support each other and make it fun all the time. I have never been on or coached such an inclusive team focused on having fun as well as swimming your best.”
Some highlights of the meet include Laurel Nixon taking off 30 seconds in her 100m freestyle race, Imogen Cowan breaking the meet record in 50m butterfly, and swimmers Geneve Magnan, Madeline Holitizki, Morgan Robertson-Weir, Jaylen Rushton, and Sophia Main stepping up to do the longer events that are normally swum by kids much older than them.
The team also finished the weekend with only five disqualifications which shows the swimmers are focussing on correcting small mental errors. Finally, Imogen Cowan also participated in the grueling 400m individual medley race, also known as the Guts and Glory, finishing fifth out of eight swimmers, where she was the youngest by three years.
Colville meet aggregate winners:
Div 1 Girls Silver: Imogen Cowan
Div 1 Boys Silver: Lachlan Bibby-Fox
Div 2 Girls Bronze: Ella Chouinard
O-Category 1 Silver: Morgan Robertson-Weir
Div 3 Girls Bronze: Madeline Holitzki; Silver: Jaylen Rushton
Div 5 Girls Silver: Olivia Cowan
Div 6 Girls Silver: Sage Cowan
Div 8 Girls Gold: coach Cynthia Pfeiffer
Team Points:
8th 726.5 Creston
7th 771 Trail
6th 856 Colville
5th 893 Grand Forks
4th 906 Kimberley
3rd 941 Penticton
2nd 1,405 Castlegar
1st 1,796 Nelson