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The Foothills Stingrays are sending 10 athletes to the Alberta Summer Games thanks to the exploits of a pair of 10-year-old swimmers.
The Alberta Summer Games, July 26 to 29 in Lethbridge, showcase the elite 11 to 14-year-old athletes from the Wild Rose province, but allow those under the age requirement to compete above their age group should they meet qualifying standards.
The Stingrays had two such swimmers who defied the odds.
Ten-year-old Megan Deering parlayed her performance in the 100m backstroke at the Summer Games Trials, June 10 at the Talisman Centre in Calgary, into a qualification for the Games. She finished with a personal best of 1:39 in the high stakes swim.
“I got first in my heat and I got 20th out of all of it (including) 13s, 14s, 12s, 11s,” said Deering. “There was a girl ahead of me who was faster and I was really trying to get faster than her so I just sprinted the whole thing.”
Deering came fourth for the 12 and under category for Zone 3, Calgary, and Zone 2, Big Country, and was the benefactor of the geographic boundary separating the two zones.
“There was a girl from a club that was NCSA and she could be Airdrie or in Calgary so I was waiting to see where she lived and turned out she lived in Calgary so she was Zone 3 and then that qualified for me to go,” she said.
Deering is only in her first season of competitive swimming with the Stingrays and called her berth at the Summer Games the highlight of her young career, along with a spot earned at the short course Age Group Championships. However, she’s not putting too much pressure on herself in preparation for Lethbridge.
“I hope I get some (personal) best times because I’m doing all the (individual medleys) and all the breaststrokes and they’re my best events,” she said.
Competing against girls up to the age of 14 is something Deering will have to overcome in Lethbridge as one of the youngest participants in the Games.
“A little bit,” said Deering when asked if it’s intimidating to swim with older children. “There are all these really fast 13, 12 and 11 year olds.”
She’ll have a familiar face on the pool deck guiding her as Stingrays coach Emma Hesterman was selected to coach the Zone 2 swim team for the Games.
“That’s really exciting for me because I didn’t want to be with a totally different coach,” Deering said.
Hesterman said she’s looking forward to her first taste of coaching at the Games.
“It’s great experience for my coaching career,” she said. “To be part of coaching the 10 kids we have as well meeting and coaching other swimmers will be a really great experience.”
The Zone 2 coaching staff will maximize its swimmers’ potential in Lethbridge through a careful selection of all 32 entries.
“What we’ve done is we’ve gone through every single swimmer’s best times and compared them against the team and selected our top-three swimmers in each event,” she said. “We can have a good chance of winning.”
Stingray Justin d’Ailly booked his ticket to the Games by shredding his personal best time in the 800m freestyle, a stroke he had not performed all season, by three minutes.
“I haven’t done that for a year and I’ve been training hard,” d’Ailly said. “I came second for 10 and 11-year-olds.”
The 10-year-old said he’s not intimated by the prospects of competing with older swimmers. Despite the age difference, he expects to earn an 11-year-old A time at the Games.
The Stingrays will also be represented at the Games by Justin Lisoway, Miranda Kasko, Chyanne Simpson, Kaitlyn Bouchard, Blaise Evelyn, Robert Knox, Larissa Little and Abigail Griffiths. The Foothills club makes up 10 spots on the 32-person Zone 2 outfit for the Games.
Four Stingrays —Finlay Knox, Layne Guidinger, Emilia Hesterman and Michael McMahon — qualified for the Summer Games, but opted instead to attend the Age Group National Championships occurring on the same weekend.
For more information on the Alberta Summer Games visit www.2012albertasummergames.ca
