Blog 4

Last Sunday was the end of the Swim Team Championship in Quebec City. The Pointe-Claire Swim Club (the club where I swim and the Club where I’m doing my internship) won the competition with a total of 2449 points. The club who took the second place was Club de Natation de Quebec with 1552 points. As for the other teams, Club Aquatique de Montreal finished in third with 1492 points, Club de Natation de Gatineau received fourth with 1109 points, Club de Natation Samak from Brossard in fifth with 938 points, Club de Natation Rouge et Or de l’Université Laval in sixth with 895 points, and finally Club de Natation de la Piscine du Parc Olympique in seventh with 390 points. To have a better comprehension of how the system of points works, my second blog post explains how the point system functioned during this swim meet. The three men who won the most medals were: Stanford Li (in the 11-12 year old age group) from Pointe-Claire with 5 gold medals, Loic St-Martin (in the 13-14 year old age group) from Club Aquatique de Montreal with 5 gold medals as well, and Emil Goin (in the 15-16 year old age group) from the Pointe-Claire Swim Club with 4 gold medals and 1 silver medal. On the women’s side: Katerine Savard (in the 17 and over category) from Club Aquatique Montreal won 5 gold medals, Marianne Rhéaume (in the 13-14 years old category) won 4 gold medals and 1 silver medal, and Stephanie Hussey (in the 15-16 years old category) from the Pointe-Claire Swim Club won 3 gold medals and 2 silver medals. The last day of competition was also a good opportunity for me to ask swimmers and head coaches to complete surveys. Coaches reciprocated well when they were questioned for the survey. 5 out of 7 head coaches present at the swim meet completed it. As for the swimmers, I had already asked a lot of them to complete the survey during the first two days of competition, so there we’re only a few high performance athletes remaining that I could have asked. Because of the craziness associated with the swim meet, I only succeeded to ask 3 of the athletes, mostly from Gatineau. Globally, this weekend was an amazing experience and it also benefited my research, because it allowed me to see swimmers and coaches from the 7 best swim clubs in Quebec. Finally, here are some pictures of the last day of the competition: