NORTH Vancouver's Chena Swim Club won the 2013 Swim B.C. AAA Short Course Age Group Championships held Feb. 28-March 3 in Victoria, claiming the event's team title for the first time in club history.
Chena out-touched the Hyack Swim Club in one of the tightest team races in the event's history, racking up 2,128.5 overall points to top Hyack by just 50 points. Pacific Sea Wolves Swim Club was a distant third with 1,831 points.
"We gathered the entire team at the beginning of the year and together made this one of our key objectives for this season," said Chena head coach Patrick Paradis in a release. "I was so proud of the way our team pulled together to achieve this goal, supporting one another and raising their performances to a new level, especially on the final night."
Chena trailed Hyack by three points heading into the last day of racing but surged ahead with a big kick at the end.
Several swimmers from Chena as well as the West Vancouver Otters Swim Club broke individual meet records and one even set a new Canadian records at the Swim B.C. meet.
West Van's Nathan Clement set a pending Canadian record in the men's 50-metre short course freestyle for paraswimmers in the S6 class with a time of 35.24. According to Swimming Canada, the old record of 35.43 was set by Benny Galati in 1998.
Emily Overholt, also an Otter, cleaned up in the 15-year-old girls category, setting meet records in the 800-m freestyle, the 200-m individual medley and the 400-m individual medley. Chena swimmers also got into the record-setting business as Tim Zeng in the 15-year-old boys 50-m freestyle, Nicolas Duke in the 14-year-old boys 200-m backstroke and 200-m butterfly and James Dergousoff in the 18 and under 100-m breastroke all set new meet marks.
