The Prince George Aquatic Centre is a hub of activity this weekend as the BC Summer Swimming Association (BCSSA) Provincial Championships fill the facility with parents, athletes, volunteers and spectators from across the province.
The provincial championships have been running since Aug. 11 with events such as diving, water polo and artistic swimming. This weekend will see more than 1,600 athletes compete in speed swimming Saturday and Sunday from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m.
The main pool at the aquatic centre was packed with hundreds of people, with scaffolding set up to accommodate spectators.
In addition, the parking lot will be filled with food trucks and vendors. This event has grown so large that tents have been set up along the adjacent field next to the aquatic centre to accommodate families and athletes waiting for their turns to compete this weekend.
Tents were sorted into the swimmers' regions, with the Cariboo region’s competitive swimmers and families all camping together.
Rory Boyle, BCSSA's Cariboo regional director and president of the Pisces Swim Club, has been looking forward to this event for a long time and was excited to see the Aquatic Centre come alive.
“It’s exciting,” said Boyle. “We’ve been putting work into this for the last year and to see 1,700 athletes in Prince George with all the supporting friends and family — it’s just amazing for Prince George, amazing for our local athletes to get to compete in their own pool filled with excitement. It’s great.”
Boyle was also happy to see Prince George swimmers at the Pisces Swim Club make their mark on such a big stage.
“We’ve got just shy of 1,700 actual swimmers for the meet — and the Pisces sent 80 swimmers — and the Cariboo region, which includes Dawson Creek, Quesnel, Mackenzie, Nechako Valley and the Prince George Pisces, sent just over 160 swimmers. It’s super exciting. We’ve got some really fast swimmers and we’re looking to tear up some records in the pool.”
One of the Pisces swimmers looking to make his mark is Colby Watson, a Division 7 swimmer who made his mark at the Cariboo Regionals. The Citizen caught up with Watson before his 50-metre freestyle preliminary swim this morning.
Watson has been swimming since 2019, when he joined Pisces to swim with his two sisters. He told The Citizen that he did not expect to get this far when he joined six years ago.
“I would not think I would be the number one seed in ‘50 free,’” said Watson. “I thought maybe I would be a B final, but not number one. It feels awesome. I got a lot to prove here, and I’m excited to do so.”
He added that despite a recent shoulder and bicep injury that has limited his mobility, he is still excited to compete.
“A little bit nervous going into this race for sure, because I’ve been having some injury issues, but I’m super excited to do this race … It feels really good to have a lot of people with similar times to me, because that’s really gonna help me push further in these races,” he said.
Bob Lees, team manager for Pisces, was especially proud Friday as he has helped oversee the development of the Prince George team since 2016.
“In 2016, the club was on a downturn,” said Lees. “Clubs have peaks and they have valleys, and we were in a valley then. Nobody wanted to run for the board, and there was talk of the club not continuing just because there was no parental involvement.
“My son-in-law, Rory Boyle, went to the washroom and I nominated him for president while he was in there. Surprisingly enough, he won, and then when he came out everybody thanked him and applauded him. Then the next position was the vice-president — and the only person nominated was me. That was the start of the new generation of Pisces board members.”
He was especially excited to see the hard work his athletes have put in since the COVID-19 pandemic and told The Citizen how much these athletes have pushed themselves over the years.
“It was a perfect storm — when we were trying to rebuild the club, along came COVID,” said Lees. “I think for our club, really coming out of COVID was when we really came into our own. We were able to secure lanes from the city and we were able to hire coaches and assistant coaches.
“Then we just started building momentum. Through COVID, a lot of facilities weren’t open. A lot of parents selected swimming as their child’s activity because they could swim through it. A very large percentage of those swimmers have stayed with us and are still with us. So we have some experienced swimmers. We’ve got some passionate swimmers. Now, as you can see, we’ve been able to bring an event like this to Prince George.”
City of Prince George aquatics manager Jim Worthington was especially happy to see more than a year of preparation and planning pay off in a spectacular turnout to the beginning of the speed swimming weekend.
“We’ve been looking forward to this all week,” said Worthington. “We knew it was gonna build and this was gonna be the busy weekend — and it hasn’t been difficult! The temporary viewing that was built with scaffolding has been amazing. It’s held enough of our spectators and it’s definitely outperformed even my expectations. It seems like everybody has enough space to view. There are 1,600 athletes, so there are a lot of people in the building at one time.”
Worthington emphasized that an event like this would not be possible without the help of more than 100 BCSSA volunteers who are needed every day during the meet.
“From my perspective, just a real big thank you to the BCSSA volunteers and organizers,” said Worthington. “They have been great throughout this whole process and made our job to host it very easy. We couldn’t have done it without them — and they’ve just been wonderful.”
