Alberta Age Group Trials LC By: Coach Alex - Jun. 23, 2010 Alberta Age Group Trials – Lethbridge June, 2010 On the sunny afternoon of Thursday June 17th, a group of eager swimmers left Fort McMurray to embark on the long journey down to Lethbridge, Alberta to take part in the Alberta Age Group Trials ( AKA B Championships). Driving in the vehicle with Coach Alex were her very able and trustworthy assistant, Deanne Noel and swimmers David Hu; Mitchell Mulhall; Harleigh Puga; Lochlan Weavers. Breena Rusnell, our fifth swimmer, travelled down with her mom, and siblings and Mrs Mulhall. The drive to Edmonton went really well and we all had a hearty supper and slept at the Days Inn, near the airport. The next morning we were up early to check in for our flight to Calgary and then onto Lethbridge. As Mitchell pointed out, the planes seemed to be getting smaller and smaller and the on the last leg of the journey, Calgary – Lethbridge we were on a plane with only 20 seats one on each side of the cabin. After we landed, we went to pick up our mini van and headed off to eat a good lunch before making our way to the University of Lethbridge pool for day one of the meet. This day saw the kids swim in the 400 free and the 200 IM. We had some good results with Mitchell and David both making finals and Harleigh having a great swim in the 400 free! We stayed at the Holiday Inn express which was very nicely placed, near to the pool and also walking distance to a few good restaurants. The hotel also supplied a full buffet breakfast each morning which was awesome. During the weekend, Mrs Rusnell and Mrs Mulhall kept us all well supplied with fruit and snacks on the deck as well as prepared some of the lunches and a delicious lasagne dinner on Saturday night. Back at the hotel, Deanne and I made sure the kids all got to bed really early and even got them to sleep for 2 hours in between heats and finals each day! After collecting all their phones, ipods, itouches etc each evening, the kids soon gave Deanne the nickname of ‘fun-sucker’ but were very glad they had handed in their electronic gadgets when they began to see the best times they were getting in the pool after having a good nights sleep so she was forgiven! The swimming went really well all weekend and every swimmer took off time and made at least a few finals. Our medals started to stack up too and by the end of the weekend David had one gold and three silvers, Breena had one gold, two silver and one bronze and Mitchell took the silver in the 50 backstroke. Harleigh and Lochlan also had a breakthrough meet and showed their metal time and time again with dropping lots of time. Harleigh placed 5th in the 800 free and Lochlan grabbed 7th place in the 100 free and 8th place in the 50 free and 100 back. In addition, Breena and David qualified to go to Age Group Provincial Championships at the end of the month! Well done to all of you. The trip home was an adventure to say the least! Waking up at 4am, we had booked the hotel shuttle to take us to the airport to catch the early 5.30am flight back to Edmonton but on arrival we were told that the one and only plane had not come in the night before and that all flights for that day had been cancelled ( it seems the same plane goes up and down between the two cities as the runway is too short for the usual Air Canada planes). With a group of hungry, tired swimmers to get back to Edmonton that day in time to drive back to Fort McMurray, we started calling every car rental agent in town but with it being 5am nobody was answering their phones, even the after hour emergency numbers! By this time all the other passengers were also trying to find ways of getting up to Calgary so the race was on to find transportation! At last we found a cab company who would charge us a flat fee to drive us all to Calgary airport. They arrived some twenty minutes later and by 7am we were on the highway on and on our way. We arrived at the airport and were told there was a flight leaving within the hour for Edmonton and lo and behold they had enough seats for us so we quickly grabbed some food at Tim Hortons and off we went to Edmonton.  It seemed our luck had turned for the better as all our baggage arrived on time, our vehicle was sitting waiting for us at Edmonton airport and despite a few arguments with our Australian GPS, we were on our way back to Fort McMurray. A quick stop at Red Robin for lunch and back on the road where the exhausted but happy and well fed swimmers slept most of the trip back, arriving in Fort McMurray at 7pm Our thanks once again to Deanne, Sheila and Alana for all their invaluable help and congratulations to all the swimmers on a great weekend of swimming! Next up is the Alberta Age Group Champs in Edmonton. We have a bus for this meet and we are leaving on July 1st (check meet info sheet on club web site for further details). The attached picture was taken after having our picnic lunch on the grounds of the University of Lethbridge where the meet was being held.

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