The Barracudas Swim Club held its annual swim-a-thon on Jan. 27 in St. Paul, with young swimmers kicking and crawling their way through as many laps as possible during the two-hour timespan.
The annual event serves as the club’s major fundraiser on the year, with swimmers collecting pledges either as a lump sum or a per-length total.
“It helps to keep our registration fees low,” said club president Pat Ryning. She went on to add that the yearly swim is also a good way for the swimmers to gauge their progress.
“The parents record how many lengths they do, and at the end of the year they get a certificate with their lengths on it,” she said. “The younger kids can use flippers once they’ve swam 30 minutes without them.”
Coach Darren Culham was impressed with the totals that were being logged at the event.
“I know one parent today got caught doing the pledge per lap. Their son swam 100 lengths, and they pledged $1 a length,” he said. “Parents are always surprised at how many lengths their little guys can do in two hours.”
His swimmers were drawing from reserves of stamina that usually go untapped during their regular events.
“Endurance is fairly important, but there’s never a race that’s going to be 200 lengths,” Culham said. “Most of these kids train for short events. The older ones will learn how to pace.”
The swimmers used many different types of strokes to propel themselves through the water on Jan. 27, and according to coach Culham, those who wanted to go the distance were well served by varying their techniques.
“Breast stroke is a great distance one. It’s not a front crawl or a back crawl, which are a lot faster but you burn a lot more energy,” he said. “It’s good for them to change strokes, because if they don’t, certain muscles will tense up.”
Coach Culham’s daughter, Catianna, must have taken her coach’s advice.
“I’m happy for my daughter, she swam the 200 lengths. She really wanted to do that,” Culham said.
All told, the Barracudas had 54 swimmers participate in the event, covering a total of 5,722 lengths – the equivalent of 143 kilometres.
