In the wake of his community swimming success, Connor Matthezing is preparing to make waves at the next level. The 17-year-old Cochranite has signed a letter of intent to join the University of Calgary varsity men’s swim team in the fall.
The former Cochrane Comets swimmer, who’s currently on Calgary’s Killarney Swim Club, can’t wait to get started with the U of C Dinos swim team after being offered a scholarship to join.
“I’m really excited,” says the former Bow Valley High School student now attending National Sports School in Calgary.
His selection to U of C is his latest lap in the pool taking him to the next level.
“In Grade 10, I moved up to the Killarney Swim Club. That progressed a lot. I got a lot better because I got a lot more training time, pool time.”
And U of C wasn’t the only Canadian Interuniversity Sport institution interested in signing him.
“Early last year, U of L (Lethbridge) wanted to contact me. The coach wanted to talk to me about recruiting me. At the start of this year, the U of C Dinos asked me to come out for a recruitment camp. I went and swam with them for 3-4 days and at the end of it they offered me a scholarship to swim for them. I accepted the scholarship and signed with them.”
His specialty is sprinting – 100- and 200-metre freestyle and 100m butterfly. As a Cochrane Comet, he trained at Big Hill Pool, a short-course, 25-metre facility. You do a lot of turns at each end of the pool to get your distances in.
“Those are my specialty,” he says of his ability to flip at the each end of the pool before launching in the other direction.
Now he’s swimming long-course, in 50-metre lanes. With Killarney he’s in the pool six days a week, with two-a-day workouts on Wednesdays and Fridays. He expects his training to increase the minute he joins Dinos in the fall.
“It’s going to be a big change. I know they work their swimmers a lot harder than I’m working right now. So definitely I’m going to have to pick up my game a bit. They work them hard in university just because they’re bigger guys and more experienced. So I’m going to have to adjust to that.
“But it’ll be good.”
