UPDATE: July 18th, 2022

ORIGINAL

After not being able to host a swim meet since 2019, the Biggar Barracuda Swim Club is getting set for the first big meet of 2022 tomorrow. Head Coach of the Barracudas Kris Doering, said the meet is one of the largest of the year. 

“The swim meet is going to be actually fairly big; it is our semifinal. This is the meet that the kids go to make it into provincials. So, most of our clubs in the northern part of our region are going to be there.” 

Doering has a large group of kids who are part of the club, ranging from very young, up to teenagers. 

“We have around 40 on our swim team. Not all will be swimming in the big meet this year. Quite a few of them are too little to swim, but I have entered 17 into our home meet so there's quite a few there,” she said.  

The length of the season was shorter than usual according to Doering, as the team has only been to two other prior meets before the one tomorrow. 

“It was extremely short, usually semifinals aren’t until next weekend and we’ve only had three meets. I don't know whether a few of the teams just lost some of their swimmers and couldn't hold meets or their clubs folded. I know it's been a struggle for summer swimming, just over the last couple years so, we only had the Humboldt meet, and that was in June. And then last weekend we had Nipawin and Watrous meets, they were back-to-back Saturday, and Sunday, and then semifinals and provincial. So, it's been a really short season for us,” Doering said.  

She is hoping for a strong showing from her team in the meet. And explains what they have to do to move onto the finals. 

“They have to hit the top six in our meet in order to advance to provincial, so I'm hoping quite a few of my kids that are swimming will go to provincials. This year they've placed well. Lots of time has been taken off. I've had some of my swimmers that have never received ribbons or anything like that, they received them this year, so they were pretty excited. Some of them compete in big groups, I know my 11 and 12 girls, there's usually about 20 swimmers in that group, so it's not easy to get a ribbon because you have to be in the top five or six so, it tends to be a bit of a fight to get there, and lots of competitions sometimes. Some of our kids have brought home medals right from our little ones to our big ones, it's been good.” 

The races all the teams will be taking part in are the standard ones, according to Doering.  

“There are three different races of freestyle, and we've got butterfly and there's a couple of different races, especially for our older ones. Then we have the backstroke and breaststroke and we have our IMs, which are our medley and that's where they do all four strokes. Then relays of course, that's the fun part,” Doering added. 

Good luck to all the swimmers from the Biggar Barracuda Swim Team, and all swimmers taking part in tomorrow’s big meet in the Town of Biggar.