The Comox Valley鈥檚 summer swim team, the Blue Devils welcomes three former Blue Devils back as summer coaches and celebrates the end of the winter maintenance season with an additional former Blue Devil as the winter coach.
Sam Helpard is back for his second year as the Blue Devils鈥� head coach. Helpard is a 23-year-old Comox Valley native who is a graduate of Brentwood College School. He initially began swimming with the Blue Devils when he was just three years old and continued his swim career with the team until the age of 16. Helpard holds several club records in the 100-metre backstroke and the 50-metre freestyle. Prior to becoming the Blue Devils鈥� head coach last year, Helpard offered his coaching talents with the club as a winter maintenance coach as well as a junior coach. He has also coached in the Special Olympics for a decade. Helpard plans to attend University of Victoria in the fall to pursue an engineering degree.
The Blue Devils also welcome back Ava Webb for her second year as an assistant coach with the Blue Devils. Prior to becoming assistant coach, Webb helped the Blue Devils as a junior coach. She first began swimming with the Blue Devils at the age of five and swam all the way until she was 17 years old. Ava graduated in 2022 from GP Vanier in conjunction with Partners in Education. Webb has just completed her first year at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver and is studying environmental science and continues to swim with their intramural swim team. She is happy to be back home in the Comox Valley for the summer.
The Blue Devils welcome back Tristan Bennett this year for his first year as an assistant coach. Like Webb, Bennett also graduated in 2022. He has spent many years in Japan and Hong Kong with his parents and attended the Hong Kong International School for his secondary education. He returns back to the Comox Valley every summer with his family where he swam with the Blue Devils. Bennett began swimming with the Blue Devils at nine years old and swam all the way up to last summer. Bennett is swimming for the University of Lethbridge in Alberta, where he currently holds the 18-year-old Alberta provincial record for the 50-metre breaststroke and is also currently ranked in the top five in Canada in the 50 breaststroke.
The Blue Devils would not be complete without the tireless dedication of our winter maintenance coach, Abby McDowell, who took the coaching helm last September and kept the Blue Devils swimmers in top condition during the off-season. McDowell was born and raised in Comox Valley and graduated from GP Vanier in 2021. She is currently pursuing a bachelor of science in nursing at North Island College. McDowell began swimming at the age of seven and competed in her last season as a Blue Devil just last summer. Her favourite stroke is freestyle and she still holds several Blue Devil and Vancouver Island Regional records in the 50- and 100-metre freestyle. The Blue Devils look forward to having McDowell back for another season of winter maintenance in the fall.
The Blue Devils are just starting up their summer swim season. They practise at the Comox Valley Aquatic Centre during the month of May and then move to the Memorial outdoor pool in Courtenay in June. Registration is still open for the summer season for swimmers age five and up of all swim abilities. Information on the Blue Devils鈥� swim program can be found at
