NEWS RELEASE
NARWHALS
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Thunder Bay’s Northwest Narwhal Swim Club is off to Etobicoke, Ontario for Ontario Festival Championships on June 17-19. The Narwhals have six swimmers that have qualified for this competition which include Elly Bodnar, Paige Brown, Zoe Hogard, Hayden Nisula, Jillian Thompson, and Katherine Warkentin.
The team just came off an excellent finish at the Thunderbolts 50th Anniversary Grand Prix Swim Meet here in town at the Canada Games Complex. They finished fourth out of 15 Teams. Winning 42 medals. Medal Winners included Elly Bodnar, Paige Brown, Kamry Crocker, Annika Graham, Mikayla Lambert, Amelia Mozzon, Maya Mozzon, Hayden Nisula, Madison Nisula, Aubrie Opaski, Ella Opaski, Jillian Thompson, Sophie Venasky, Katherine Warkentin, and Addison Wojciechowski Lutz.
Swimmers that achieved 100 per cent personal best times included Marianna Barrett, Kamry Crocker, Annika Graham, Zoe Hogard, Grace Lee, Charlie Makrides, Amelia Mozzon, Maya Mozzon, Madison Nisula,Alessia Opaski, Aubrie Opaski, Madelyn Paul, Thandolukle Phiri, Paige Venasky, and Addison Wojciechowski Lutz.
Three new club records were broken. Elly Bodnar in the 200 Fly eclipsed Kaitlyn Luu’s record of 2:57.01 in a time of 2:52.71. Two Records were broken by Katherine Warkentin, one in the 400IM in a time of 5:47.96 taking down Ilana Mironsky’s record of 5:50.57. The other record came in the 100 Freestyle 1:04.19. In this race, we saw the Katherine and Elly Bodnar (Record holder 1:04.79) face off Head to Head with both girls going under the record and Warkentin touching out Bodnar by 14 one-hundredths of a second.
Elly Bodnar won the Overall High point Trophy for the 11-12 Girls Agegroup and Katherine Warkentin won the best Race Trophy for Girls aged 11-12 (based on World Performance charts) for winning the 100 Free.
Head Coach David Iwanyszyn was very pleased with all performances. “With all the setbacks in the last couple of years, we have swimmers excelling and making provincial and National cuts. For a small club, we are on track to doing great things.”
The next Competitions the team will be attending are Manitoba/Saskatchewan Provincial Championships and then 2022 Canadian Junior and Senior Championships.
