Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Young athletes got a taste of the swim-meet experience during the Fun Meet hosted by the Jasper Red Fins Summer Swim Club at the Aquatic Centre on Aug. 6.
Due to COVID-19, this was an internal swim meet with only the local swim club.
鈥淭he idea of this meet was to introduce most of our swimmers to what a swim meet is, how it鈥檚 run and how exciting they can be,鈥� said Red Fins President Shannon Hofhuis.
鈥淥ut of the kids that we have here today, only three of them have been to swim meets before, so they kind of get the idea of what that鈥檚 like and what we can look forward to next year.鈥�
This is the first Fun Meet in Jasper, since the Red Fins typically don鈥檛 host swim meets in Jasper due to the small sizes of the facility and the club.
鈥淢ost of the time, we travel outside of Jasper to go meet with other clubs and do bigger swim meets,鈥� Hofhuis said.
Under normal circumstances, the Red Fins attend between four and five swim meets per summer, as well as regionals and provincials.
鈥淭his summer, our region has decided mostly to do internal meets, so we haven鈥檛 travelled to any meets, and regionals and provincials have been cancelled due to COVID,鈥� Hofhuis said.
The Red Fins began the season with four returning swimmers and now has around 27 registered in total.
The competitive kids swim four times per week, and the development kids each swim twice a week, always in the mornings.
Hofhuis said it was amazing how all these new athletes were coming into competitive swimming.
The Fun Meet served as the last event of the season, and training ends this week.
鈥淭his is kind of our last hurrah for the summer, for these kids,鈥� Hofhuis said.
