Club Records & Qualifiers at 2023 Summer Provincials

Pacific Coast Swimming had 36 athletes at 2023 Long Course Provincial Championships hosted by VPSC at the UBC Aquatic Centre. From Thursday to Sunday, PCS gained 5 new club records, as well as 12 new Canadian Junior Championship qualifiyng times. On Thurday, Sophie Wood placed 1st in the para 100m butterfly, dropping alomst 2 seconds off her best. Following, Maelle Sanborn placed 2nd in the girl's 13-14 200m breaststroke as a newly-turned 13 year old, shaving over four seconds off her previous personal best. Rubin Lee placed 2nd in the boy's 13-14 50m freestyle as well as dropping almost a full second off his best time. Alonso Gutierrez also claimed silver dropping half a second off his best time and set a new 15-17 club record with a time of 24.60 in the 50m free. Sophie Wood placed first again in the women's para 50m freestyle with a new best time. Roy Pan also placed on the podium, claiming bronze and obtaining his first National Qualifying entry time for Paralympic level swimming. Following the 50m freestyles were the 200m Medley Relays where the boys 13-14 team (R. Lee, E.Zhou, N.Hicks, B. Zhang) placed 1st with over a 2 second lead. Rubin Lee also set a new club record in the boy's 13-14 50m backstroke while leading off the relay with a 29.05. After the relays, we finished off the night with 800m freestyle where Lucy Hallett placed 2nd just a few seconds over her best in the girl's 15-16 category. Friday finals started off with Rubin Lee placing 1st in the 13-14 100m backstroke with a time of 1:02.40, shaving a second off his best. Sophie Wood placed 1st again in the para 100m backstroke, dropping 1 second off her personal best. Roy Pan placed 3rd in the para 100m backstroke dropping over 5 seconds off his previous time and obtaining his second National Qualifying entry time. Following the 100m backstroke was the 200m freestyle where Rubin Lee stepped onto the podium again placing 3rd with a best time of 2:04.77. On Saturday, our night of finals took off when Rubin tied for silver in the 100m freestyle, with a best time of 56.61, claiming his 4th podium spot of the meet. Alonso Gutierrez claimed his second 16 year old CJC time standard in the 100m freestyle with a time of 54.01. Sophie Wood placed placed 1st again in both the para 100m freestyle and 100m breaststroke obtaining best times in both. Roy Pan dropped almost 3 seconds off his personal best in the Para 100m freestyle obtaining his 3rd National Qualifying time of the competition. Following the 100m freestyle ws the girls 100m breaststroke, where Tracy Zhao placed first in the 100m breaststroke by over 2 seconds and obtained her CJC qualifying time by over 2 seconds, narrowly missing the club record by .05. Maelle Sanborn also swam the 100 breast obtaining her 13 year old CJC qualifying time by almost 2 seconds. 50m backstroke came next where Rubin placed 2nd and setting a new club record for the 13-14 girls. The 15&over 1500m freestyle was up next where swimmer Lucy Hallett placed 3rd in her age category just in front of 4th place. To finish off the evening, the boys 4x200m freestyle-A team (A. Gutierrez 1:59.23, R.Lee 2:04.72, K.Feenstra 2:04.26, A. Camaraire 1:58.62) placed 3rd, breaking the previous club record with the time 8:06.83, breaking the previous record by 5 seconds. To wrap up the weekend, Tracy set another club record in the Sunday prelims 50m breaststroke by .2 with a time of 34.45. In the evening, Tracy placed 1st followed by Maelle Sanborn in 3rd for our first double podium event of the meet. On the boy's side, Eason Zhou placed first, dropping .2 off his best for a time of 32.49. Following the 50m breast was the 200m backstroke where Rubin claimed 2nd, dropping 2.5 seconds off his best time, as well as placing 3rd in the 400m freestyle moving up from 7th. Sophie Wood claiimed her 6th gold of the meet in the 200m IM with an almost 5 second best time. To wrap up, the competition finished with 4x50m freestyle relays where the boys 11-12 team (X. Huculak-Payne, J. Erickson, E. deGoey, E.Eide) placed third with outstanding performances across the board. The boys 15-17 team also claimed bronze (K. Feenstra, A. Gutierrez, R.Lee, A.Camaraire) with great performances. In addition to bronze, the team set a new 15-17 200m freestyle club record with a time of 1:39.43. A very successful weekend in Vancouver for our athletes, some of who will go on to compete at Canadian Junior/Senior Championships this August in Toronto or to Far Westerns in Concord, California. Go Bolts!