By Brad Bunyan
GISS Swim Team Coach
Another year of swimming has come and gone for the Gulf Islands Secondary School (GISS) Scorpions, and once again, our little club in the islands found some excellent results at season’s end.
Swim season begins early in September, often with first practices in the second week of school. While this is normal timing for most fall athletics, swimming has intensity: practices happen six times per week, twice before sunrise and all four days after school. We saw quite a nice resurgence in numbers this year, with 24 signing up to compete, including five international students and a large number of eighth graders. A huge shout-out to Zach Lundrie, Chelsea Harris and the staff at Rainbow Road pool for letting us have the space and time to train.
Practices run seven weeks, and then it’s competition time. Oct. 20 saw the GISS team at the Vancouver Island Regional Meet in Nanaimo, for an extremely high-pressure event. There is a single race per event, and only the top five in the region qualify to move on –– often the entire competitive season takes less than 60 seconds. We had 16 qualify for provincials, many in relay squads and a goodly number swimming in individual events.
Team captain Matthias Woodley led the way, qualifying in every event he swam in and earning a provincial berth in three individual events (breaststroke, butterfly and individual medley) and one relay. Not to be outdone, our longest wonder-twin team members Liam and Elyse Walsh also qualified in four events (Elyse in backstroke and three relays, Liam in four relays). Other qualifiers were Keegan Otsubo-Papp (backstroke and freestyle), Jack Jacquest (100m freestyle) and Pasley Hayden (backstroke and individual medley), and we had a representative team in every eligible relay race qualify for provincials. Not bad for a small school with a public rental pool!
Nov. 15 was the first day of provincial races, with the top 32 swimmers in each event from all the regions gathered to race. The top eight swam for medals on Saturday, and the next eight swam for consolation team points. We had a slightly reduced team, losing four swimmers to various health and personal reasons, and our 12 competing swimmers hit the water with everything they had.
Of our 15 events swum, nine qualifications for Saturday’s finals happened, and in the second-last race of the day for our team, our girls 4×50 freestyle relay put together their best combined swim and seized a surprise eighth place, to be given a chance to race for medals on Saturday. And despite a small “headware” malfunction, our girls mixed-medley relay held their positions and secured a top 10 finish.
This was followed by a truly impressive feat, with Otsubo-Papp swimming in three races within an hour overall, and achieving some incredible results: 50m freestyle moving from 16th up to 13th, then 50m backstroke saw a 12th-place finish with a half-second improvement on Friday’s swim, and then the boys 4x100m relay saw the team move up from 12th to 10th for another top 10 finish, where Otsubo-Papp’s sub-minute 100m time saw him pass three other swimmers in the final 30 meters of the race.
To compare, most swim club races and high-level events see swimmers in one race every several hours, sometimes one race per day, and the energy output from Otsubo-Papp was awe-inspiring to watch.
Not to be outdone, the girls 4×100 relay finished atop their race for a ninth place provincially, and as a team they improved on Friday’s time by more than seven seconds (a long time in a sprint race), and on their qualifying time from regionals by just over 25 seconds (competition brought out the best in Elyse Walsh, Sashi Sanchez-Wickland, Kika Bayerova and Molly Magley in this one). Our most stacked and graduate-heavy relay (mixed medley) came up next, and swam to a hard-fought 10th-place finish, squeezing out three other teams within two seconds of them, in our race with both coaches (so much thanks to Zoe Sanchez-Wickland and Elyse Walsh for all the time and dedication they invested this year) and both of the highest-level boys (Otsubo-Papp and Woodley), as they swam to a hard-fought 10th-place finish removing two seconds from their Friday heat time. Had they just held the time, they would have finished 13th.
The final two events of the day had Woodley in his individual medley race, having just qualified on Friday in 16th place, turn in an excellent swim and move up to 13th with a 1.5-second improvement, and in the only medal race of the day the girls’ freestyle relay held their eighth-place finish, taking two seconds off their time and closing to within seconds of the teams ahead.
Our squad finished ninth overall in B.C., with the girls’ component — Bayerova, Elyse Walsh, Indigo Marshall, Magley, Zoe and Sashi Sanchez-Wickland — finishing eighth and the boys finishing 10th: Liam Walsh, Will Harder, Otsubo-Papp, Steffen Hendrik, Jacquest and Woodley.
With six graduates in the meet, we’ll be left with a very young team for the next few years, but the potential to climb even higher is certainly present here in the Gulf Islands.
Thank you to everyone who shared the pool with us, the parents who put up with the inhumane hours and especially to the kids who worked so hard. I truly hope they share the pride I have in their efforts and results, not just as athletes but as fantastic and humble people as well. See you next fall!