OTTAWA – Swimming Canada is pleased to announce the swimmers appointed to the 2022 High Performance Athlete Council by CEO Ahmed El-Awadi.

Composed of 10 active or recently retired Olympic, Paralympic, and open water swimmers, the council will meet regularly with members of Swimming Canada’s High Performance program leadership to provide constructive feedback, and to represent the interests of all high performance swimmers, with the goal of furthering the strategic objectives of Swimming Canada.

“I’m looking forward to engaging with this group of dedicated high performance swimmers and working together to achieve the mandates of the council,” said El-Awadi. “Our Board of Directors is committed to hearing from our athletes. The Athlete Council is one avenue that supports this construction of a solid framework for dialogue and understanding between all of our stakeholders. It also provides swimmers with a deeper insight into how organizations are run and can help our athletes further develop their life skills.”

Patrick Waters, a member of the 2019 Parapan Am Games team, is co-chair of the council, along with two-time Olympian Sydney Pickrem.

“I’ve been an athlete with Swimming Canada for a long time now, so I think I can add a voice to help move the organization forward with improving communications and processes with the national team athletes,” Waters said. “What we really want is a council that will have some succession planning in place so that it’s not just a year-by-year process. We need steps along the way to establish those checkpoints, and that’s our main priority as a council.”

The council had its first meeting on March 9 and will meet a minimum of three times throughout the year with their next meeting set for May 5.

THE 2022 SWIMMING CANADA HIGH PERFORMANCE ATHLETE COUNCIL

Sydney Pickrem, Co-chair

Patrick Waters, Co-chair

Javier Acevedo

Hau-Li Fan

Finlay Knox

Kylie Masse

Rachel Nicol

Emily Overholt

Abi Tripp

Tess Routliffe

Taylor Ruck

Kayla Sanchez