Neptunes surprise coaching staff with third-place finish in Castlegar
By The Nelson Daily Sports
The Nelson Neptunes shot of the team standing ladder to finish third at the Castlegar Aquanauts swim meet Sunday in the Sunflower City.
Host Castlegar used home pool advantage to edge second place Grand Forks and the Neptunes for the overall title.
“We are happy with our overall placing and hope to maintain it for Regionals which will be coming up in just a few weeks,” said head coach Cynthia Pfeiffer.
“Considering the training that the swimmers endured this week, these results were not expected at all,” Pfeiffer added.
Jaylen Rushton, in Division two girls and Ohia Wintraub, in Division four girls, each won silver.
Matthew Holitzki, Sage Cowan and Sam Matthew, in Division four boys, Division six girls and O-Cat Boys, each won bronze, respectively.
Coaches Cynthia Pfeiffer, won gold and Rebecca Afford took silver in Division eight women’s.
“(Neptunes) trained incredibly hard all week, but all the swimmers were still able to get significant best times — some taking off as much as 25 seconds from their previous times,” Pfeiffer said.
Some of those incredible times included:
- Nava Sachs’ 200 meter IM
- Cameron Bibby-Fox, Arjun Bhabra, Olivia Cowan and Ohia Wintraub’s 100 meter freestyle
- Kallie Badry’s 50 meter breaststroke
- all of our relays – this was the first meet where we had no disqualifications on any of or relays
- Mile relay (1600 meter) – Sage Cowan, Nava Sachs, Hannah Malenfant, Ohia Wintraub, Olivia Cowan, Samuel Matthew, Matthew Holitzki, and Joanna Blishen finished third with a time of 18:21
Pfeiffer said the Neptunes have one more week of hard, sprint-focused training before entering the “taper” or rest portion of training.
“We have next weekend off, the Kimberley meet, and finally Regionals during the August long-weekend,” she said.
