Members of the Wrangell Swim Club participated in the Southeast Regional Championship last week. Pictured from left to right are (Front Row): Lucas Stearns, Andrei Siekawitch, Christina Johnson, Sophia Martinsen, Stella Buness, (Middle Row): Ashleigh Loomis, Alisha Armstrong, Rhiannon Wenzel, Paige Baggen, Trinity Glasser, (Back Row): Laura Helgeson, Renee Roberts, Jack Roberts, and Carter Hammer. Not pictured, but also members of the club who swam, are Jimmy Baggen and Nikolai Siekawitch.
Last week, 16 swimmers from the Wrangell Swim Club participated in the Southeast Regional Championship. The championship, held from April 5 to 7, was open to swimmers from the ages of 7 to 16-years-old.
According to Jamie Roberts, coach of the swim club, Wrangell's kids competed in 123 different swims. Of these, 86 of them were personal bests for the swimmers. Roberts also added, in an email, that the Wrangell Swim Club was the second largest of the seven competing teams.
"I was proud of their performance," Roberts said in an email. "Overall, the team was well prepared for the championship meet. They have been building their aerobic base over the last several months and spent the weeks just prior to the meet fine tuning the details like starts, turns and finishes."
Four swimmers achieved personal bests in every event they participated in: Alisha Armstrong, Carter Hammer, Christina Johnson, and Andrei Siekawitch.
Roberts said that Hammer participated in seven events, but five of them were in swims and strokes he had not competed in before. These were longer distance swims, as well, such as the butterfly stroke.
Roberts also said she was impressed with her younger swimmers, including Lucas Stearns, Andrei Siekawitch, Sophia Martinsen, and Stella Buness. She said that they all showed significant improvement over the course of the championship.
"I prefer to use time improvements as a gauge of progress," Roberts said. "Many swimmers are keyed into this as well. In the beginning, they typically focus on what place they get because it's nice to get ribbons and medals. But, after a while they transition to chasing personal bests."
Multiple swimmers also won awards for their performance. Stearns took third place in the 8-years-old and under boys category. Nikolai Siekawitch and Jack Roberts took second and third place, respectively, in the boys 13 to 14-years-old category. Renee Roberts took third place in the girls 15-years-old and older category. Jimmy Baggen took first place in the boys 15-years-old and older category. Roberts explained that placement is determined by points given on how each swimmer finishes their event.
The season ends for the Wrangell Swim Club on April 30. For most of her swimmers, Roberts wrote, the championship was their last competition of the season. However, Roberts said that some of her swimmers used the championship as an opportunity to qualify for the Alaska Junior Olympics, which will be taking place later this month. Christina Johnson achieved seven junior olympic qualifying times during her swims, according to Roberts. Johnson, along with Jack and Renee Roberts and Nikolai Siekawitch, will go on to compete in the junior olympics on April 25 in Anchorage.
With the season drawing to a close, Roberts is looking to the club's future. Among the list of things she wants to accomplish is to get the proper certifications necessary to run official time trials in their home pool at the community center. Roberts also wants to obtain nonprofit status for the swim club, which she said would allow them to apply for grants and travel reimbursement, and would also make them eligible for team awards and allow them to swim in relay races.
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