Cochrane Piranhas feasted on the competition at the Alberta Summer Swimming Association provincial meet. Sending 15 swimmers to the season-ending age-group event Aug. 14-16 at Edmonton’s Kinsmen Sports Centre, Piranhas brought home nine medals in individual events and gold in 17-under boy’s 200-metre medley relay.
“It went well,” said Piranhas first-year head coach Breanna Hendriks, whose team trains at Cochrane’s Big Hill Leisure Centre pool. “A really exciting atmosphere. Kinsmen was packed with swimmers, coaches and parents. Really, really cool. I’ve never experienced that from a coaching perspective at summer provincials.”
With 54 swimmers, Cochrane is classified as a large club and competes at the team level with larger ASSA clubs from major urban centres.
“We are classified as a large club. We have 54 swimmers,” Hendriks offered of her club which is 11 swimmers over the small-club threshold of 43. “We’re borderline. I wish they had small, medium and large categories because that would definitely change things for us, for sure.”
Still, Cochrane finished eighth out of 27 clubs on ASSA’s large-club list. The association’s meets are all held in short-course (25-metre) pools.
“We held our eighth-place ranking at regionals and provincials. It’s pretty awesome that we can maintain that eighth-place standing going into provincial standings.”
Piranhas were led by Erik Nusl, who scored gold in 15-17 boy’s 50-metre butterfly (26.25 seconds), gold in 50m backstroke (27.84), gold in 100m fly (59.42) and gold in 100m freestyle (54.60). Nusl also took gold in the 17-under boy’s 200-metre medley relay.
And it was a Nusl family outing on the medal podium as Thomas Nusl took gold in boy’s 15-17 800m free (10:09.26), silver in 100m back (1:06.46) and bronze in 50m back (30.55).
Brielle Burdett won bronze in 12-under girl’s 400m free (5:23.16) and Zachary Michalski silver in 15-17 boy’s 800m free (10:29.47).
The Nusls teamed up with Eric and Connor Swedlo to win the boy’s 17-under 200m medley relay in 1:58.86.
