John Calnan
Coach:
National Development

Swimmers must have a rock solid belief in themselves and their ability to perform. They need to have others believe in them - coaches, parents, teammates, and friends. This becomes contagious and gradually builds enthusiasm, resilience and all of the other psychological and emotional skills needed to move on to become a successful national level swimmer. One of the most overrated things in competitive sport is to continually build for the future disregarding the hard truth of the moment: that unless you perform to your best level and work at maximum effort, the reality is you are what you do today. A swimming career is like a marathon - 26 miles - and when you've run 13 miles you have done a lot, but you are only half way through and you have a long way to go. If you have trained hard, you have a belief that the second half of the race is your time and you tackle it with vigour, but if you have pulled up short, the reality can be extremely challenging.

The past three months have been busy with four championship meets: Central Regions, Easterns, Provincial Championships and East Coast Champs. All of these meets have provided opportunities for the National Development swimmers to build their beliefs and to test their perceptions.

There were many great moments and some outstanding performances:

Central Regions...

medal winners included Clement Cheng (2nd 200 fly), Patrick Malihan (2nd 100 back), Donna Nguyen (1st 200 breast, 3rd 100 breast + new provincial and age group national qualifier in the 200 breast), Matthew Suen (2nd 200 breast) and Lev Oumanski (2nd 100 fly), 13/14 girls (Sarah Shum, Donna Nguyen) 3rd 200 free relay

top 8 final swims included Maggie Runnalls (6th 1500 free) and Joshua Tong (7th 200 back)

Easterns…

We had "1" swimmer at the meet and she made the most of the opportunity - Nathalin Moy reached the B final placing 14th in the 200 fly and 11th in the 100 fly and also achieving her first senior national cut going 1:03.31.

Provincials…

Medal swims came from Youn Ho Choi (1st 200 fly, 2nd 800 free and 400 IM, 3rd 400 free), Alex Jin (2nd 200 fly), Razvan David (2nd in both the 100 and 200 breast), Mack Smith (3rd in both the 100 and 200 breast), 12/13 boys 400 medley relay 2nd and 200 medley relay 3rd.

Top 8 "scoring" swims included Jonathan Brodie (5th in the 100 fly and 6th in the 200 fly), Rogan Kim (4th in the 100 breast), Nathalin Moy (5th in the 200 fly and 7th in the 100 fly), Joseph Ng (8th in the 50 free), Jeff Turnock (8th in the 200 breast).

East Coast Champs…

Top 3 medal swims from finals included Clement Cheng (3rd 200 fly), Youn Ho Choi (1st 200 fly, 2nd 1500 free, 3rd 400 free), Yi Wen Li (2nd in both 400 im and 200 fly, 3rd 800 free), Nathalin Moy (1st 50, 100 and 200 fly, 2nd 200 IM).

Top 8/Top 16 scoring swims from finals included Donna Nguyen (4th 200 breast, 5th 400 free, 100 breast, 200 free and 200 IM, 8th 100 free), Maggie Runnalls (12th 800 free), Jeff Turnock (8th 1500 free, 9th 100, 200 breast and 100 free, 10th 400 free).