Swimmers take first place in 20 of 28 events
The University of Ottawa men’s and women’s swim teams participated in and won the Go Kingfish Invitational on Nov. 1, where they hosted swim clubs from the University of Guelph, Queen’s University, Carleton University, and the Go-Kingfish swimclub. Although the meet hosted a variety of universities, the points were tallied in terms of duals.
The Gee-Gees were set on beating Guelph, whose team has quite a few strong swimmers.
“Our goal was just to win,” said fourth-year ethics and society student Nicole Lachance.
The sport of swimming is a unique one because it is focused on individual performance but it is still a team sport.
“You win races for your team, but your best times are for yourself,” Lachance said. “I think my favourite moment of today’s meet was the relay. Everyone on the team gets behind each other, and you really get to race together. It’s so badass.”
A single team can normally attend three meets during its regular season, at which they’ll accumulate a score to give themselves a placement in the league’s overall standings.
In a normal dual meet, each team would have up to four lanes. However, because this was a quad meet, the Gee-Gees only crowded up two lanes. The meet constituted 28 events in total, each compounded by two heats.
The Gee-Gees had two lanes in the men’s 100-metre freestyle, won by fourth-year communications student Adam Best with a time of 51 seconds 1 millisecond and third-year geography student Stefan Ruksys with a time of 54 seconds 31 milliseconds.
The Gee-Gees won every single dual in both the men and women’s categories, with cumulative placements of 20 first-place finishes, 15 second-place finishes, and nine third-place finishes in 28 events.
The victory bodes well for new head coach Dave Heinbuch and assistant head coach Rick Frame, who both said they were very happy with the win.
“Everyone performed well, even the rookies,” said Heinbuch. “I think we’re lucky because the Gee-Gees already had a strong core of athletes, and this is definitely one of the best teams I’ve ever coached.”
The athletes also seem happy with their coaching staff. First-year economics student Marko Tanasijevic said part of the reason he decided to come to the U of O was because of Heinbuch, who had previously performed in the 1975 Olympics.
The men and women’s teams will attend their next meet Nov. 16–17 in Guelph.
