Swimming Canada’s Targeted Distance Camp recently wrapped up in Fort Myers, Fla. Training at Florida Gulf Coast University’s outdoor 50m pool were eight junior aged swimmers who will hope to make Team Canada for the World Junior Swimming Championships Sept. 4-9 in Israel.

The team included Laila Oravsky (Barrie Trojans Swim Club, ON), Julia Strojnowska (Langley Olympians Swim Club, BC), Aidan Erickson (Langley Olympians Swim Club, BC), Olivier Risk (ROC Swimming, ON), Lydia Kilger (Pointe-Claire Swim Club, QC), Maria Saldana Riebeling (Canadian Dolphin Swim Club, BC), Zachary Parisé (Pointe-Claire Swim Club, QC), and Timothé Barbeau (Neptune Natation, QC).

The camp is part of Swimming Canada’s High Performance Strategy and provided the young swimmers with a challenging week of endurance based swimming, together with the opportunity to go ‘head to head’ with their peers.

National Distance & Open Water Coach Mark Perry was delighted with how the camp went.

“Improving distance swimming as a whole is the goal of the initiative and it’s been exciting watching these young swimmers go through eleven workouts, learning to manage their bodies through 75km of swimming,” Perry said. “The coaches were able to individualize workouts and learn more about how to produce and then prepare distance swimmers for the future. It is going to be very exciting watching this group race at trials.”

When asked about how she felt the camp went, Oravsky said, “The training camp was a great week of challenges, learning, and getting the opportunity to work with amazing swimmers and coaches.”

This camp also provided a week of coach development. Perry led the coaches in an opportunity to collaborate in developing and running workouts for the swimmers. Representing clubs from across the country were Martin Gingras (Pointe-Claire Swim Club, QC), who was appointed head coach for the camp, as well as Chrystèle Roy-L’Ecuyer (Neptune Natation, QC), Endi Babi (Barrie Trojans Swim Club, ON), Tristan Cote (Red Deer Catalina Swim Club, AB), and Justin Daly (Spartan Swim Club, BC) who had key roles as assistant coaches. Also joining the group for the latter half of the camp was National Development Coach Ken McKinnon.

“The coaches were challenged daily about the content of their workouts and it was an opportunity to have some fantastic discussions. Coaches worked with each other and with different swimmers throughout the week making it just as challenging for them as it was for the swimmer. My challenge to them is to go back to their home programs and put into place everything they’ve learned,” Perry said.