While the rest of Prince George shivers in the grip of winter, Haley Black will be hanging around the outdoor pool in the hot sun of Australia.
She leaves for Melbourne on Dec. 27 and won't be back until Jan. 22, but her one-month trip is no vacation. She's there to train with her junior national teammates and race at the Australian Youth Festival event.
Black, 17, is one only two B.C. athletes on the 16-member Canadian team. She and Emily Overholt of West Vancouver will be among the eight female swimmers who make the trip from Canada. An email on her phone broke the news she'd made the grade while she was at school at Duchess Park secondary attending her Grade 12 classes.
"I've never made a team that big before and I'm getting really pumped up about it and I want to do really well there," said Black. "We're doing a three-week staging camp [in Geelong] and then there's a swim meet. I hope to make it into a final and maybe get a medal, I just hope to make improvements. I know they're very good at swimming down there and I know it's going be challenge but I'm just excited to see how I will do."
For Black, who has competed internationally at the North American Challenge Cup, the chance to represent Canada is what she hopes will become a more frequent occurrence once she begins her NCAA college swimming career next year in the United States.
"I've made a youth national team but never a junior national team,." said Black, who trains in the pool 10 times per week. "This is kind of like one step up and they have a really good development program. [The training is] starting to pay off and now I can move my way up the ladder and move up to the next level.
"I want to go to a school that has an international focus, so I'm not just going there for NCAA [championships]," she said.
Black is being wooed by several American universities, including Florida State, Western Kentucky, North Texas and Michigan, who have made scholarship offers. She plans to sign a letter of commitment next week.
She specializes in butterfly, backstroke and individual medley but Black is an above-average swimmer in all her strokes, according to Barracudas head coach Jerzy Partyka. Black started swimming with the Barracudas as a six-year-old, watching her five-years-older sister Kharah become one of the club's top swimmers. The opportunities that now beckon Haley are a source of inspiration for the other Barracudas swimmers, most of whom are involved in this weekend's Northern Medical Sprint meet at the Aquatic Centre.
"It's very good she made the team, not only for her but for the whole club and it will be very exciting for her to show what she can do," said Partyka. "This is the best 17-and-under team and it shows you what kind of calibre swimmers we have here. It's good for everybody but especially for the younger swimmers, who have lots of opportunity here. They have a good swimming pool, with access to a 25-metre or 50-metre pool, they have a very good coaching staff and they can go very far, as long as they want to do it."
Black will have one more meet in Kamloops in early December to get into racing mode and try for some best times. The three-day Medical Sprint meet, which involves 214 swimmers (including 82 Barracudas) from seven clubs, will be one of her final hometown swim meets.
"I keep thinking about this being my last year with the Barracudas and that this will be my last Barracudas short-course meet and I'll try to make the best of it," Black. I't's weird because this has been my life for as long as I've known and now I'm going to go somewhere else."
