Far Westerns from Concord California

Pacific Coast Swimming traveled to California this summer to compete against some of the best swimmers from the Western U.S. 1600 of them in fact!

The meet is called Far Western Championships and is an outdoor meet located in the San Fransisco region of California.

Our group of 18 swimmers did a fabulous job of taking care of themselves over the 5 day meet in the hot California sunshine. Our hottest day had temperatures rising to 38 Degrees!

Highlights of the meet included Camryn Stannard swimming multiple finals winning Gold (200 IM), Silver (100 FR, 200 FR), and Bronze (100 BR), medals along the way and coming very close to tying for the top Aggregate Award in her 11/12 Age Group. Camryn also had a standout swim in the 200 IM eclipsing Alyssa Backen`s club and VIR record in the 200 IM set in the same pool and the same lane from 2005! This 200 IM was also a BC record. She also set two other club records in the 200 FR and 50 FL.

Brendan Fitzpatrick won Gold in the 100 and 200 BR both in club record times.

Michael Schmidt helped with the mini sweep taking Silver in the 100 BR.

Top 9 finalists included Allison Ballantyne (200 IM, 100 FR, 100 FL, 400 IM), Brendan Fitzpatrick (200IM), Tom Chapman (400 IM), Keir Ogilvie (1500 FR, 100 FR), Anthony Guiteriez (400 FR), Jessica Luo (200 FL, 100 FR, 800 FR), Camryn (50 FL, 400 IM), Artem Kuklev (800 FR), Michael Schmidt (50 FR), Grace Macdonald (200 FL).

Our relay teams did a great job as well placing in the top 8 over the four days of relays!

Three of the swimmers we had compete with us left the meet early in preparations for Canada Games in Winnipeg. Action starts there on Tuesday Aug 8th. Good Luck to Michael, Jessica, and Keir!