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Senior backstroker breaks through

Timing is everything.
Foothills Stingray Megan Deering was one of four members of the team to win relay gold at the Man-Sask Provincial Championships last month.
Foothills Stingray Megan Deering was one of four members of the team to win relay gold at the Man-Sask Provincial Championships last month.

Timing is everything.

In his final short course swim meet as a member of the Foothills Stingrays graduand backstroke specialist Jotham d’Ailly went out in style and captured the elusive senior national time in the 200m final at the Man-Sask Provincial Championships.

“Going into the meet I knew it was definitely do-able,” said d’Ailly. “The few weeks before, the times I was going for practice in breaststroke really reflected getting that time.

“I ended up getting (the senior time) by just over a second, by quite a bit.”

The Grade 12 Holy Trinity Academy student touched the wall in 2:17.65 and not only knocked off the senior national time standard, but was fractions of a second from the Olympic trials qualifying time in the event.

“I was three one-hundreds off, really, really close,” said d’Ailly, who’s off to the University of Western Ontario to study business and engineering in the fall. “Being that close to the trials time is incredible because getting that trials time is a really big deal, that’s the top time standard I can get in Canada.”

Pacing himself according to the easy-fast mantra gave the Stingray the energy to burst free for the final 50 metres of the race in which he also captured the gold medal.

“Going into it I felt really relaxed, I was confident,” he said. “I knew I had to take it out fast and strong in order to get the time. At the 100 mark I felt really strong, still felt like I had a lot of energy to finish off the race.

“Halfway through I knew it was going to be a good time.”

D’Ailly is the third member of the Stingrays this swim season to attain a senior national time, joining younger teammates Megan Deering and Finlay Knox.

The latter two enjoyed some memorable moments themselves in Saskatoon.

Deering joined forces with teammate Alycia Weber to help Alberta’s selects win gold in the 4x50m relay while Knox teamed up with Justin Lisoway to repeat the feat in the male division against their counterparts from Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

Weber gave the Albertans, a team selected as the top swimmers from Alberta-based teams selected by the province’s respective coaches, the early jump in the backstroke leg.

“We all got so jacked because everyone from Alberta was cheering for us,” she said. “When the whistle blew my body felt staticky, it felt different than all the other races before.”

Deering was next to dive off the blocks in the breaststroke, maintaining the wild rose province’s lead en route to capturing the relay gold medal.

“Alycia always goes before me, even at our club, she touched first and I was just trying to get an ever bigger lead,” Deering said. “Every single girl on the relay went so fast because it was so loud in there.”

The Alberta boys team echoed the sentiment in its golden performance in the prairies.

Knox put the foursome in-front after making up ground in the breaststroke leg with Lisoway adding to the lead in the butterfly to lift the squad to a comfortable victory.

“It was a totally different environment from normal racing,” Lisoway said. “You’re going in doing a sprint and can go all out and not worry about pacing yourself.

“That’s the kind of environment that makes for really good sprinting.”

In the individual competition, Lisoway added seven gold-medal performances while establishing four meet records in the process. Knox contributed a pair of gold medals in the 200m breaststroke and backstroke while Weber was first in the 100m backstroke.

Silver medallists included d’Ailly, Knox, Deering and Kennedy Loewen. D’Ailly, Knox, Weber and Layne Guidinger also chipped in with bronze medal swims.

The Stingrays established 18 age group records and 10 overall club records at the meet.

Olympic taste

Stingrays Finlay Knox and Justin Lisoway got a front row seat to the best in the country.

The dynamic duo were among the select few invited to attend the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Trials in Toronto last week.

“It was so much fun to be able to see what it’s like at these huge meets,” Knox said. “What the atmosphere is like, what the pressure is like and how they swim and see if there is things they’re doing that we’re not doing.”

More than a vacation for swim fans, the two used the opportunity as an experience to follow the lead of the elite in the country.

“We watched how they warmed up, what kind of routines they had going into the race,” Lisoway said. “And how they cooled down and recovered after the race.

“That was really interesting to get a new perspective on that rather than just guess working it from what we’ve been doing.”


Remy Greer

About the Author: Remy Greer

Remy Greer is the assistant editor and sports reporter for westernwheel.ca and the Western Wheel newspaper. For story tips contact [email protected]
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