Submitted

It is championships season for the Comox Valley Sharks, and the swimmers were busy around the country putting up great results these past weeks.

The past weekend (March 9-10) in Victoria nine Shark swimmers took part in the BC Winter Provincial Swim Championships. The swimmers shined as they posted the highest point score total of any small team at the competition.

The 14-year-old boys led the way with fourth-place finishes in all three relays, narrowly missing a podium spot in each event. The team of Luc Nel, Sasha Woldnik, Noah Lewall and Platon Marfenko posted club record-breaking swims in the 4x50 medley relay, 4x50 free relay and 4x100 free relay.

Individually, Nel had four appearances in finals with top-eight finishes in the 50 back, (fifth), 800 free (sixth), 200 free (sixth) and 100 back (eighth).

Woldnik had final appearances in the 100 fly (fifth), 50 fly (seventh) and 200 fly (seventh). Lewall joined Nel in the 50 back, finishing in sixth place. Current SFU swimmer Jordan Raume represented the Sharks in a podium finish with a third- place effort in the 50 breaststroke.

Joining the team in Victoria also included Nadia Macluskie, Sam Southen, Jay Ho-Gillis and Elyse Macluskie. The team finished 18th overall and first among clubs with 10 or fewer swimmers competing and broke 13 club records.

Also, this past weekend the USport Championships were being held in Montreal as the top university swimmers competed.

Competing for McGill University, Iris Tinmouth had best times in all her events finishing with top-eight results in 200 butterfly (fourth), 400 freestyle (sixth), 800 free (seventh) and a fourth-place finish in the 4x200 free relay. This weekend (March 16-17) in Ohio, Laine Perry will be representing SFU at the NCAA Division 2 Championships as she races with her Red Leaf teammates in the 4x200 Free Relay. Shark alumna Kaya Lathangue also just finished competing at the WAC Swimming Championships in Texas.

To start off the club鈥檚 championship season in February, e18Shark swimmers traveled to Vancouver to compete in the BC Divisional Championships. Shark swimmers came away with 20 individual medals. Led by Bennett Saccucci (two gold, two silver, one bronze), Nel (three gold, two silver) and Woldnik (four gold). Joining them on the podium were Ho-Gillis (one gold, one silver), Nadia Macluskie (one silver), Lewall (bronze), Marfenko (bronze) and Southen (bronze).

Sharks also had three relay podium finishes with 12 & under boys (Saccucci, Waymouth Reid, Cameron Lewall and Connor McQuillan), 13/14 boys (Nel, Woldnik, Marfenko, Lewall) and 15 & over girls (Macluskie, Ho-Gillis, Julia Revenberg and Sophie Nel) all finishing first or second. Joining the podium finishers to help the team to an eighth-place finish were Sophia Lee, Cohen MacNeil, Elyse Macluskie, Molly Picard and Nico Saccucci.

All the swimmers are now back hard at work working towards the spring and summer competitions.