LAC LA BICHE - Over two dozen youth from the Lac La Biche White Caps Swim Club participated in a long-distance swimming challenge last month, swimming over 88 kilometres over two days in an effort to raise funds for the club.
“It’s one of our big annual fundraisers for the club each year,” said Jennifer Okrainiec, the club’s head coach. The group raised $4,000 to be used for equipment, club competitions, supporting the national campaign and any other needs to operate the local swim club.
The Swim-A-Thon is a Swimming Canada program that aims to fundraise for swim clubs through a nationwide challenge, while also drawing clubs from across the country to test their limits.
“It's been around for a long time,” says Okrainiec, adding, she participated for the first time herself 30 years ago. “It’s a yearly challenge and every year they’re always working to get better. They always try to beat their previous year's length.”
Marathon challenge
On March 29 and 30, the White Caps participated in two evening sessions at Portage Pool. The youth group ranging from six to 17 years old, attempted to swim each way of the 25-meter length pool distance for over two hours, which is about five kilometres.
“Usually, the goal is to try and do 200 lengths in two hours. So depending on their age and goals, some achieve it, some go past it and some don’t, but it’s still good practice,” adding, everybody did their best.
“We typically swim long distances anyway, but this is just basically to challenge the kids as well.”
The club’s swimming and provincial competition season, which began earlier this year has now wrapped up until the summer season, said Okrainiec.
“We start over again for what we call the long core season. We don’t have a lot of big meets coming up…nothing really big until the end of June,” she says.
The support from family, friends of the swim club, donors and volunteers have been great for supporting the local club.
“Over the years we have gotten great sponsors.”
Experience and support
For the athletes, their hard work, practice and experience garnered throughout the provincial season, which recently wrapped up, gave them an opportunity to apply their skills.
Many of the students throughout the year also participated and placed in provincial competitions which Okrainiec says helped the club bring the energy and perform very well at the Swim-A-Thon.
“They enjoy it, but it’s hard. They are very tired and hungry at the end,” she said, smiling. She added that this year was kind of like starting over because the club hasn’t operated much over the past two years due to COVID.
“For a lot of them, it was a whole new challenge.”
Next year, the head coach hopes to have the White Caps participate in the national program. If anyone one like to support the local group or sponsor members in future competitions, they can reach out to the Lac La Biche White Caps Swim Club.
