At a little more than five-foot-seven and still climbing, 13-year-old Claire Brown of the Prince George Barracudas Swim Club knows what an advantage it is to be tall in a swim race.
She towers over most of the girls in her age group and that means it takes fewer strokes in the pool for her to go the distance.
Her height works well for her in volleyball and basketball and those long limbs helped her reel in two club records at the Prince George Medical Northern Sprints meet, held a few weeks ago at the Aquatic Centre.
Brown inherited her tall genes from her mother Alison, who is five-foot-10, and from her father Warren, who is six-foot-two. But that pales in comparison to her uncle on her mom's side, UBC Thunderbirds men's basketball team assistant coach Spencer McKay, who stands six-foot-nine.
"I do have that in my family - it helps on my butterfly and backstroke and when I do the turns on the wall. It helps me go further off the wall when I push with my legs," Brown said.
Brown clocked 33.19 seconds in the 11- and 12-year-old girls 50-metre backstroke, breaking her own record from earlier in the season in Prince Rupert, where she wiped out the Barracudas' record set by Julie Wing in 2011. She also shattered the club standard in the 100m individual medley with a time of 1:12.37, bettering Hannah Esopenko's record of 1:14.14, set in 2012.
Now 16, Esopenko competed in the Olympic trials last spring, and for Brown, beating one of her records gives her reassurance she's on the right track.
"That makes me feel like I'm succeeding more and I want to go on to beat more records," she said. "Hannah told me after that I'm doing really good and she's proud of me and I felt really good about it."
Brown idolizes former Canadian Olympic team swimmer Brent Hayden of Mission, a world champion in the 100m freestyle event who went on to win bronze at the 2012 Olympics. Hayden taught the Barracudas in a clinic at the Aquatic Centre prior to the Medical Northern Sprints meet and it was an inspiring day for Brown.
"He was my idol before I met him," said Brown. "I really have a dream of going to the Olympics, that's what I want to do. He told us he wasn't the best swimmer when he was younger but he started to pick it up and got stronger. He said, 'Just go for your dreams.'
"I was seriously thinking about quitting swimming at the end of last year. I was getting frustrated and crying at the swim meets. But I thought, I don't want to give up my dream of going to the Olympics."
Brown, who celebrated her 13th birthday Nov. 23, took up swimming five years ago with the Williams Lake Bluefins Swim Club. Now in her second season with the 'Cudas, her goal the rest of the season is to meet or better at least two more provincial triple-A standards and maybe qualify for the Western Canadian age group championships.
Her 100m backstroke time is already quicker than the Swim BC standard, which became more stringent this year to try to reduce the number of swimmers at the short-course provincial meet, March 2-5, 2017 in Victoria.
Right now, the backstroke is Brown's favourite stroke. She's also strong in the butterfly, finishing third out of 80 in the 50m fly at the double-A provincials last year in Penticton.
"I like doing the streamline under the water and it's easier to breathe," she said. "My backstroke is faster than my freestyle times, I'm not that good at freestyle or breaststroke."
Swimming in the Barracudas elite group requires six two-hour practices per week and three 45-minute dryland training sessions. Brown also finds time to play volleyball (she recently wrapped up her season with the College Heights Grade 8 team, which finished second in the district playoffs) and she's just beginning basketball season on her school's junior B team. She also plays soccer, as a defender, and likes track and field, but the seasons conflict so she can't do both.
"I think it's better to play different sports," she said.
Brown is reaping the benefits that come with her athletic background and her willingness to put in the work to improve her strokes, said Barracudas coach Jason Smith.
"She has the ability to adapt to different situations and when you ask her to put a little more effort into something or change something in her technique, she'll do it," said Smith. "It doesn't always come, but she's putting in the effort and that's the main thing."
Brown and 32 other Barracudas are in Kamloops this weekend at the MJB Law Classic meet, which starts today. Kamloops will host the triple-A long course provincials July 5-9, 2017.
