The Canada West Championships start today with the defending champions UBC once again favourited to win both the men’s and women’s category with the Calgary Dinos being their closest competitors.
Competition schedule:
Friday November 21
Finals – 3 p.m. PST
Saturday November 22
Finals – 4 p.m. PST
Sunday November 23
Finals – 2 p.m. PST
Finals will be broadcast live at canadawest.tv
Swimswam reached out to the coaches of some of the top programs in the conference, and this is what they had to say leading up to the championship meet:
Steve Price – UBC
“Both Teams look strong going into the meet this weekend. We have good depth and will cover off a lot of events.”
“We gave them this week to ‘prep’ but by no means are they tapered or shaving. We also compete the following weekend at home at a two day early season LC Senior Meet just prior to exams.”
“Our goals are to win the team titles, defend them from last season, try to win all the relays, get after as many Canada West Meet Records as possible and set a high standard going into the rest of the season.”
“Tera Van Beilen will use this meet as her final prep competition going into SC World Champs. If everyone swims up to their capabilities we feel we will be in good shape heading into the new year.”
“That all said, of course we’re looking for tough competition from all the Can West schools and we know there are great swimmers and programs that will challenge us hard. We have to be ready!”
When asked who we should look for this weekend, Price named the following swimmers:
Savannah King (5th year)
Tera Van Beilen (4th year)
Erika Seltenreich Hodgson (2nd year)
Jacomie Strydom (1st year Rookie)
Maia Brundage (1st year Rookie)
Coleman Allen (4th year)
Keegan Zanatta (3rd year)
Stefan Milosevic (2nd year)
Sergey Holson (3rd year)
Yuri Kisil (1st year Rookie)
Mike Blondal – Calgary
“Our team looks good, everyone’s swimming fast”
“We’ll see how we go. I’m pretty excited about it. We’ve had a lot f good changes in our program, one of them has been the strength program and we want to see how we react to the strength program.”
When asked about rest, “All we’re going to be doing is unloading a little bit from the weights.”
“I’m looking for good results from a lot of these kids, especially a lot from the first year kids.”
“I think our relays will be competitive across the board. Whether we can go toe-to-toe with UBC when they put up ll their sprinters I’m not sure.”
When asked who we should look for this weekend, Blondal named the following swimmers:
Fiona Doyle
Tristan Cote
Josh Dow
Stefanie Schmidt
Nathan Kindrachuk/ Colleen Marchese – Alberta
Kindrachuk and Marchese chose to send Swimswam a joint quote via email.
“Over the last two weeks our team has performed consistently well. Since we are competing at three meets in a row with Can West being the third, we want to raise our game this weekend! While the competition is fierce, we believe that if we perform well, the Golden Bears can finish in the top two and the Pandas can finish in the top three. Lets go Green and Gold!”
Swimswam’s picks:
Nick Kostiuk
Joe Byram
Nikkie Macleod
Peter Vizsolyi – Victoria
Vizsolyi gave us a list of key athletes who have returned for the 2014-2015 season. He also pointed out the fact that many teams are going in with different strategies, making it unclear to make any medal predictions.
Vizsolyi said that some of the top swimmers on the team will not be as rested as others heading into the meet.
Picks:
Jon McKay: 1500 Freestyle, 200 Butterfly, Rachael Newman, 100 and 200 Butterfly
Ryan Howe, Robert Hill and Rosie Moulton
Go T-birds!