Madness is no longer confined to March.
The inaugural Mavericks Madness 500 saw the Okotoks Mavericks Swimming’s five competitors hold their own against some of the best young swimming talent in the country in a unique 5 x100m race Sunday at the Riley Minue Pool.
“That’s the first time that’s ever been done,” said the Mavericks’ Justin Lisoway. “It honestly felt like a Friday night practice just with the fastest swimmers in Canada.
“I didn’t think it was going to be this intense, but there was a bunch of people watching and it ended up being quite a bit of prize money. That’s probably the hardest I’ve ever pushed myself in a training set.”
The Madness 500 brought some up the top youth talent in the nation to the Riley Minue Pool to race for bragging rights, medals and cash prizes.
The male competitors included Mavericks Lisoway, Lorenzo Ford and Finlay Knox — the Youth Olympic bronze medallist in 2018 — along with Pan Pacific Games medallist Cole Pratt and multiple national medallist Robert Hill. The female bracket featured Mavericks Megan Deering, Alycia Weber along with Ellie Maradyn, the fastest age group swimmer in the nation in three events and Canadian swimming championship medal winner Allison McCloy.
The format had six male and female swimmers race in timed trials of all five strokes, the butterfly, freestyle, backstroke, breaststroke and individual medley. The order or strokes was out of the hands of the competitors, chosen by other swimmers, coaches and officials.
“We’re used to the pool, it was almost like an amplified practice,” Deering said. “We have our heats in practice, we race each other all the time. It’s just different to race different people.
“It was super fun, everyone was super chill about it. It wasn’t a stressful thing where everyone was aiming to win or everyone was super competitive and aggressive. It was super chill which was so nice and that made it easier to get through all five.”
McCloy finished in top-spot, Maradyn was second with Deering in third and Weber in sixth.
With little separating the elite talent in the pool, luck of the draw played a hand in the finishes.
“They drew backstroke and backstroke is kind of my weakest, but there was no excuse to go easy because it’s overall fastest time,” Deering said. “You’ve got to go all-out almost the whole time.”
That strategy changed in the late stages for the Maverick.
Once the butterfly was determined as the fourth event, leaving the individual medley as the final of the five strokes, Deering looked ahead to get ahead.
She won the IM handily, after earlier finishing in top-spot in the breaststroke.
“Not going to lie, I did back off a little on fly for the purpose of the IM heat,” she said.
The male competition went down to the wire with Knox pulling off a masterful performance in the final two events, the breaststroke and freestyle, to edge Hill for first-place.
“Breaststroke being my strongest one, that’s one I knew I needed to capitalize on,” Knox said. “Being so far down in the five 100s I really knew I needed to push that 100 and it was quite nice because it was the second last one and I knew I could go hard in that one.”
Knox was trailing by three seconds heading into the fifth and final race. Turns out he had plenty of gas in the tank for the freestyle.
“Free was last so you just give it all you have,” Knox added. “It probably couldn’t have been a better order.”
Pratt finished third while Lisoway was fourth and Ford earned a six-place showing.
“For me, I was just trying to put the blinders on and have the best five 100s that I could have,” Lisoway said. “At the end of the day, the time adds up for everyone, it doesn’t matter what everyone else does, you just need to focus on yourself.”
Once you put crowds and announced results into the equation, the extra-energy provided a late second wind for the swimmers in the latter stages of the event.
“The crowd starts cheering, Jason Pratt was announcing and telling off the scores and you’re trying to judge where you are,” Lisoway said. “Maybe I can try and catch up to this person, you get your lane assignments, you’re looking underwater and trying to figure out if you can move up a spot and make sure you’re not going to drop a spot.”
More than anything, a celebration and showcase of swimming gave everyone in the pool and on the pool-deck a thrilling experience to walk away from in the cold of winter.
“It was a lot of fun having all these fast guys up here,” Knox said. “Knowing all of them and having jokes in between, just swimming for fun, it was really great. The atmosphere was amazing.”
For more information on the Mavericks go to okotoksmavericks.com
