The Mavericks hit a milestone in their return to competition earlier this month.
The Jack Frost meet, held Nov. 5-7 at the Seton YMCA, represented the Okotoks Mavericks Swim Club’s first home hosted meet since the outset of the pandemic.
“It was a lot of joy from everybody just getting back into racing,” said Mavericks head coach Emma Hesterman. “We’re in week-10 now and we were going into the meet with some good training behind us and the first part of the season was really just getting the kids reconnected.”
Hesterman explained a big part of the early season for the coaching staff has been on adding elements of fun to what can be grueling training every day inside the Okotoks Recreation Centre.
“There were some kids that were wavering if they wanted to comeback to the constant drudgery of training every day,” she said. “Because swimming is hard work to do well in unless you’re swimming every day so we did try to instill some fun and reconnection activities and reconnected as a team and individual groups as well.
“That went very well, gradually we started building more training as the weeks went on and as they were connecting it was getting easier and easier. It was a bit of trial-and-error at first, hoping the kids would stay in the sport, but as a coaching staff we’ve done a good job.”
At the Jack Frost meet, the Mavericks had three clubs part of the event with the Patriots, Glencoe and Killarney involved, the latter of which it held a dual-club event against for its 11-and-under swimmers.
“We had four sessions with the 12-and-overs and a sessions with the 11-and-unders because you have to keep them separated,” Hesterman added. “And we had some very, very successful swims.
“We had quite a few swimmers make their championship times as well, from the top-group. A lot of kids at this time of year are not normally making best times, so it was just nice that they can come in and feel that joy of making tons of best times and be able to make some time standards too.”
Deon Badenhorst, Tess Barber, Mackenzie Hurd, Caden Kotowich, Jasper Kotowich all earned championship time standards at the Jack Frost meet.
In the 12 and over category, a number of Mavericks earned provincial trials time standards including Badenhorst, Barber, Hurd, the Kotowich brothers, Christopher Giles, Emma Hicklin, Charlotte Johnston, Jaden Melton, Keton Murphy, Mikayla Paul and Molly Penn.
Among the 11 and under boys and 10 and under girls, Oscar Bednarz, Nina Bernhardt, Declan Henderson, Leah Hunter, Peyton Klinck, Carmen McLane and Cole Ronning all swam to festival time standards.
All told, 33 Mavericks earned a podium finish at the meet with Jasper Kotowich also taking home the eliminator title in the boys 11 to 13 ranks.
The Jack Frost meet was just the second competition the club has been a part of this year following its Lethbridge meet in late-October.
Next weekend, the Mavericks are in Calgary for the Killarney Swim Club Invitational, an 18-club event with 500 competitors. The Mavericks’ next big competition for which they will be tapering is the Age Group Challenge at Calgary’s Repsol Centre from Dec. 10-12.
For more information on the swim club go to okotoksmavericks.com.
