Prince George Barracudas swim racer Eryn Isaac loves freestyle, has developed a passion for backstroke and is building her capacity for the all-out energy bursts required for the butterfly stroke.
But if she had her choice, she'd tap-dance her way out of swimming breaststroke events.
Breaststroke takes her out of her comfort zone and for Isaac it is a necessary evil. As part of the Barracudas elite group, on the verge of moving up to join the club's most seasoned athletes in the junior national tier, she knows her coaches, Jason Smith and Jerzy Partyka, want her to develop her all-around abilities in the pool before it comes time to specialize.
"I'm not very good at breaststroke, I just can't get it for some reason," said Isaac. "I really sucked at backstroke awhile ago but I think it's one of my better strokes now."
Isaac, who turns 15 on May 21, comes from a dance background. From the time she started dance classes at age three until she gave it up when she was 12 to focus on her swim training she tried virtually every style of dancing, including tap, hip-hop, ballet, jazz, musical theatre, variety and modern and lyrical.
All that dancing left her with a heightened sense of body awareness, coordination, muscle tone and flexibility, all of which enables her to her perform her swim strokes correctly and be more efficient in the water.
"I'm not really sure, maybe it helps me with my fly a bit," she said. "I've always been a good swimmer and I just wanted to try (swim racing) because I like being in the water.
"I love racing. I love the feeling when I'm done a race. I've dropped time in all my races."
Isaac beat her previous best in the 200-metre freestyle event by 12 seconds Saturday and took seven seconds off her 100m butterfly, winning her 15-and-under race in 1:14.
The weekend Prince George Barracudas Dental Moose Invitational long course meet at the Aquatic Centre was Isaac's first competition since the Kamloops Ice Classic short course meet in December. Now in her third season with the Barracudas, she says she prefers racing in the 50m pool because it seems to her like she's not swimming as many lengths as in short-course events.
Isaac has already begun workouts with the Barracudas' junior national group and by next season she will have stepped up her training from nine hours to about 11 hours a week, including twice-daily sessions two days per week.
"I'm a bit nervous about (making the jump) because I don't think I'm overly fast, but I'm also excited," she said. "It's hard but it's taught me more about dedication and to really stick to something when I'm in it."
Isaac's love for swimming has honed her time management skills and her schoolwork has not suffered. She's an honor-roll president's list student at Cedars Christian School. According to Smith, Isaac always seems happy when she's at the pool, never complaining about the drudgery of practice, and her positive attitude is infectious.
"Eryn is a very happy kid and that's what gets her through every day - she has fun with swimming and she enjoys it," said Smith. "She never likes breaststroke but we're still teaching all the kids about improving the 400 individual medley and the 200 IM. In order to have a good swim in either of those two races you have to be proficient in all four disciplines.
"She gets great support from her family and she has lots of friends at the club and she can be a very good swimmer when she learns how to race. Everybody can do drills and kick and swim in practice, but when you have to race one event and 30 minutes later race another event and then race another event 20 minutes later, and you do that consistently and competitively, while holding your strokes together when you're tired, that's the nature of the beast.
"This is the first year she's really seeing some improvement."
Long limbs provide a natural advantage to swim racers and Isaac stands five-foot-10. Height runs in the family. Her mom is five-foot-11, her dad is six-foot-two and her older sister Jessie is six-foot-one, more than tall enough to fill a role this past season as a high school volleyball middle blocker for the Cedars Christian Eagles senior team. Eryn, the only swim racer in her family, figures she's still growing. She's taken the lead from her sister and has starting playing volleyball at school.
The three-day Moose Invitational meet drew about 200 swimmers from eight north central B.C. clubs.
