2022-2023 Year-End Banquet
Last week, we celebrated our swimmers, coaches and swim families at our year-end banquet. It was such an amazing evening for us to recognize all of our swimmers' hard work and accomplishments this year. For those who missed it, here's Coach Konstantin's opening remarks and reflections on WSSC's 2022-2023 swim season:
Dear parents and swimmers,
I would like to welcome you all to our official end of year-banquet. As Head Coach of the Club, I would like to give you a short run down of some highlights that we have achieved in this past training season.
We tried hard to create an atmosphere where every athlete feels to be a valuable part of the team. We believe that having a positive team atmosphere will lift and elevate the performance of an individual to heights never achieved before. That is why we will continue to work on building the team spirit and pride of being part of the Stouffville Swim Club.
The primary focus of our Club is to encourage each and every swimming member to achieve their peak individual potential as a competitive swimmer, as well as to develop a love for swimming as a life-long source of fitness and health. A swimmer can only achieve their highest competitive potential through effort and dedication. This requires significant effort in the time devoted to training and in adopting a single-minded focus on training goals. Parents must also be prepared to support swimmers financially, and emotionally during these times. The rewards for swimmers come first in the form of success in competitions, but also in self-confidence, fitness, and highly developed time-management skills!
During the 2022 – 2023 swimming season, WSSC was able to enlarge and strengthen its grassroots level, and rebuild from the bottom up. The main focus was to develop the 12 and under program. This was necessary to be done in order keep a healthy flow of swimmers from the younger groups to the older groups.
Going forward we will focus on building all groups-based on age, ability and commitment to training. We keep in mind that the primary purpose of each group is to provide a path for all of our athletes to reach their maximum potential. The program is designed to gradually increase training and development in order to encourage athletes to remain in the team through the “A” group level.
WSSC registered 58 competitive swimmers, from which it grew from 23 at the beginning of the season. WSSC swimmers set up 18 SC Club records and 12 LC records:
Club Records LC 2023
10 Years old and under Girls
Kennedy Mauro
400 Free 7:39.05
800 Free 13:45.84 LC
Kaylie Chan
400 Free 7:25.72 LC
Annabelle Chau-Colaco
200 Back 3:51.63 LC
Ellery Chen
200 Breast 4:13.13 LC
100 Fly 2:08.34 LC
Emily Chen
200 Breast – SC
14 Years old Boys
Paul Shortis
100 Free 1:00.29 LC
50 Free 27.10 LC
200 Free 2:12.10
15 Years old Boys
Isaac Lau
50 Free 26.70 LC
100 Back 1:08.27 LC
50 Fly 28.99 LC
********************
Club Records SC 2023
8 years old girls
Ellery Chen
200 Back 4:06.40 SC
50 Breast 53.48 SC
100 Breast 1:54.92 SC
100 IM 1:51.54 SC
8 years old boys
Alex Emmerson
200 Free 3:35.87 SC
200 Back 4:30.96 SC
50 Breast 1:00.67 SC
9 years old girls
Annabelle Chau-Colaco
100 Back 1:50.11 SC
200 Back 4:03.96 SC
Emily Chen
200 Breast 5:08.41 SC
10 years old boys
Noah Fon Shong
200 Back 3:54.21 SC
14 years old boys
Paul Shortis
50 Back 32.01 SC
100 Back 1:06.33 SC
15 years old boys
Isaac Lau
50 Free 25.89 SC
50 Back 29.99 SC
50 Fly 28.46 SC
100 Fly 1:04.48 SC
100 IM 1:06.95 SC
**************************
Performance Award 2022 - 2023
Isaac Lau
50 Free Style - 26.70 - FINA - 480 points
**************************
How did we accomplish it?
Here are some of the steps that were taken:
First, WSSC supported the idea to put efforts in maintaining Instagram and Facebook social media accounts. They managed to run high traffic all year around through the social media accounts. Also, we were able to transition to a new Team Unify website which gives us more features to ease of the Club’s administration work. Here I wish to thank Antia and her husband Will.
Second, WSS set up 3 committees: Social events (Evelyn), Equipment (Liz) and IT and social media (Antia). I feel blessed to have the 3 ladies getting involved in the operations of the club. Thank you for your dedication and efforts to assist with whatever possible.
Now turning towards near future.
This coming summer Stouffville Swim Club will be organizing a summer program to help swimmers stay active, to maintain and further develop their skills and fitness. The program runs 8 weeks from July 4th to August 26th. We, at Stouffville Swim Club, believe competitive swimmers need to train anywhere between 44 – 48 weeks annually. We are currently (June 30) at week 41. Summer program of 8 weeks will bring us to the desirable annual training to ensure proper, long-term athlete development.
To be fully developed, an athlete needs to put several training seasons of 44 – 48 weeks annually. Our summer registration has gone very well despite some swimmers are planning on going away during the summer.
Since the summer is all planned and ready to start our next step is setting up registration for the next 2022 – 2023 season. The new season will start after the Labour Day weekend. The Stouffville pool is closed for maintenance until September 25th. We will start water training as of September 26th, 2023. I have been having difficulties finding pool time at other locations. Most pools in the surrounding area are either closed for maintenance or repair after summer programs.
Registration package and schedules will be posted online in a short while. Please look out for it.
I want to send A BIG THANK YOU to all WSSC coaches Britney, Adrian, Isabelle and the occasional help from Roxana. Without their knowledge, dedication, perseverance and punctuality our athletes would have never been trained to reach their current performance level.
At the end we would like to take this opportunity to thank all the parents for their continues support during good times and bad times. Developing a competitive swimmer requires patience, constant moral support plus belief in the program.
We hope that you enjoyed your year with WSSC.
Konstantin Danailov
WSSC Head Coach
More photos:
