The Cochrane Comets Swim Club will be hosting its first swim meet on Dec. 16 and 17, made possible by the opening of the Jayman BUILT Aquatic Centre.
The new pool is a major step up from the old Big Hill Pool for competitive swimmers here in Cochrane and the upcoming meet will be the first to showcase all the hard work by Cochrane swimmers.
“To be able to host a meet we had to be able to do a lot within our membership because we’ve never hosted a meet before. In order to host one, our parent membership has to officiate … meaning the host club has to be able to have 50 per cent of the officiating in order to host,” said Comets head coach Danielle Genung.
“As a team we have spent the last year getting our parents up to where they needed to be officiating wise in order to host. That was a huge undertaking and then just working with the aquatics facility to get this meet planned was another task, but we’ve had a lot of co-operation from them.”
Genung said her team has a game plan in place to put their best foot forward in the competition.
“We just need to get that first meet under our belts. Just being able to execute our plan well. We have five other clubs coming and this is a distance meet so we have a lot of big swims happening and this meet is an important one for our Comets,” Genung said.
“My guys are doing 400 IM, 200 fly, 1,500 free, those are big pinnacle events, within a swimmer’s event profile. We say event profile, because we want our swimmers to able to swim in sprint distances, middle distances and long distance swims ...it’s an important time for them and the team has really worked to get to this stage. I’m expecting them to execute it really well so they can see the payoff of all their hard work at this meet.”
With an expanded program, the Comets team now boasts more than 100 members, which is a far cry from the max 48 members that was allowed at the Big Hill Pool.
“This is historic for our club. When you get your own pool and can host your own meets, it really changes things for us and gives us more opportunities for the kids in our club,” Genung said.
“We have a huge waitlist again already, so we’re looking at expanding. If people came out and experienced our meet, see what we’re all about … it would really get our community excited about swimming.
The meet will feature 160 swimmers from five clubs across Alberta.
Opening ceremonies for the event will start at 12:30 p.m.
The Comets will also host a Speed Meet May 12 and 13.
