Effort only fully releases its reward after a person refuses to quit.
After several near misses of the Senior national time of 29.70 seconds in the 50m backstroke, Foothills Stingray Carly Ede finally broke the threshold with a scintillating swim of 29.49 at the Western Canadian Championships in Saskatoon on Feb. 14.
“I got my Senior national time and that’s the next step to where I want to go,” Ede said. “You train so hard to get best times and a lot of meets you don’t, a lot of meets it just doesn’t happen. So it’s really special when you do.”
The 15-year-old said she wasn’t feeling her best prior to the breakthrough preliminary swim, but did establish a personal best in the 50m swim earlier in the morning.
“It doesn’t matter how you feel before you race you just have to swim,” said Ede, who’s the second fastest Canadian at her age in the 50m backstroke. “All I remember is I didn’t even have time to think in that race because in 50m it goes by so fast.”
The Senior national time booked Ede a ticket to the Senior National Meet this summer in Montreal.
At just 15, Ede will be in a field of competitors of all ages as the Senior national meet is used as qualifying for the Olympic trials.
Ede also qualified for six finals in Saskatoon earning a fifth place finish in the 50m backstroke, seventh spot in the 50m butterfly and was ninth in the 100m backstroke. She swam to five of six personal bests, highlighted by the shedding of five seconds from her previous standard in the 200m Individual Medley (IM).
The 2013 Western Canadian Championships also served as a launching pad for first time competitors Layne Guidinger, Sarah McMahon, Emilia Hesterman and Jotham D’Ailly.
“It was a really fast meet and it was good to be there and I got to watch a lot of people with good strokes and learned a lot from them,” Guidinger said. “(Stingrays coach Todd Melton) would point out good people and tell me to look at their stroke and see what they’re doing right and wrong.”
The High River resident proved a quick study in the pool. She established a personal best with a 2:40.44 race in the 200m breaststroke, eclipsing the national time standard for 16-18 year-olds and earning a spot in the B-final for the event. Guidinger, 13, also swam to a national time with a race of 1:01.92 in the 100m freestyle.
McMahon didn’t let the ever-present first time jitters get the best of her in the Paris of the Prairies.
“I was really, really nervous for my first race. I almost threw up, I was shaking,” McMahon said. “Then I did pretty good.”
The 15-year-old swam to personal bests in two of three races including the 50m and 200m breaststroke, just edging a Stingray teammate in the latter.
“I beat Emilia (Hesterman) by about four-tenths,” McMahon said. “I just took off a lot of time (four seconds) and it felt like a good race. I started off pretty fast, got faster throughout the race and then had a really strong last 50.”
Hesterman, a fellow-debutant at Westerns, went a perfect three for three in establishing personal bests in the 200m, 100m and 50m breaststroke. D’Ailly earned two age group national times in the 50m and 200m breaststroke. Christyna Dashko earned personal bests in two swims in Saskatchewan, the 50m and 200m breaststroke.
17-year-old Ryan Jackson, a veteran of three Western Championships, established a new benchmark in the 200m butterfly by racing to the finish line in a time of 2:09.77.
Stingrays head coach Todd Melton could be running back to Saskatoon soon after his swimmers posted their best showing in program history with 94 points and a 36th place finish at the Western Canadian Championships.
“This is our best one by far, absolutely,” Melton stated, in matter-of-fact fashion. “We scored the most points and the kids as a whole did very well.”
The Stingrays don’t have the opportunity to rest on their laurels. The swim club will be at the Talisman Centre in Calgary from March 1 to 3 for the Age Group Championships.
For more information on the Stingrays go to www.foothillsstingrays.com
