The Bear Facts: September 17, 2021

Welcome to the seventy-eighth issue of The Bear Facts:
A source for all things Keyano!

Hi all

After an extremely trying year for all it is fantastic to back on deck and seeing the groups return to training.
 
This year the Club has worked hard to expand it’s footprint in the City. We have just recently inked a deal to take on the introduction to competitive swimming program at the Edmonton YMCA’s. Starting this season Keyano will be running programs in 3 Edmonton YMCA pools – The William Lutsky Family YMCA, The Jamie Platz Family YMCA and Castle Downs YMCA. The program for now will be specific to the needs of the YMCA. It is hoped that these YMCAS programs will provide a great platform to introduce more local swimmers to the competitive swimming program run in our regular Development program.
 
Development Program
All our Bronze, Silver and Gold programs are continuing to build and the popularity of the programs are more than evident with our registration numbers. We are still working with the City in expanding our lane allocation and pool times. We are unfortunately having to wait until  the City hires and trains more staff before we can expand into our full lane allocation. We would ask for your patience over the first few weeks of the new season. Experience has shown that the City often makes mistakes in their lane allocations and it takes a few weeks to get things adjusted.
 
This season we will be continuing our Sticker Chart incentive program and hoping this season the swimmers can actually have the opportunity to complete the charts!! I would ask for parents to please ensure that swimmers in Bronze and Silver bring their sticker charts to training each and every day. I would recommend that all swimmers in the Club purchase a simple mesh bag to keep all their swim equipment in. These can be purchased in any sports store and also on our online store on the website
 
This season we will also be expanding our Bear Cubs race series on the Wednesday evenings. The dates for these race nights are listed on the meet calendar on the Club website. We have arranged for more lane space on these evenings and we are very excited to get the kids back up and racing again.
 
Performance Program
All performance groups are now back in to the swing of a new season and all look happy and excited for a new season. We have put together a meet calendar for now but we are still being cautious given the ongoing Covid situation. We are still unsure as to our ability to provide team travel and we are reviewing this over time. The first expected travel meet is to be CSI in Calgary at the end of October. At this stage it is doubtful we would offer team travel. The final team travel opportunity would be Christmas Cracker (Victoria) in early December and OJI in Toronto. Obviously we would much prefer to provide a team travel option for these meets but we will have to watch closely over the next few weeks as to what is the safest option.
 
Staff
This year we have all our existing staff returning as well as several new hires. Over the coming weeks we will profile some of our new staff on our website and upcoming newsletters. 

Events
We have been approached by the Oilers Entertainment Group again this year to see if we might want to organise a Club activity around an Oilers or Oil Kings game. We are looking at the logistics of this and will keep you all posted.

Speedo Week

This year as part of our Speedo sponsorship we will be affforded the opportunity to host 2 Speedo Discount Weeks. During these weeks all Speedo products on our Team Aquatics store will be offered at 60% of MSRP. This will allow all club members an opportunity to get their swimmer's race suits (and any other equipment) at a bargain price. We will be providing more details on the program over the next few weeks.
 

For more details on group scheduling for the new season 2021/22 please click here:



Updates for each group will be made as needed on this page.

Welcome to new Coach Glen Playfair

NATIONAL JUNIOR TEAM RANKINGS

Given the inability of Swim Canada to host national meets last summer a ranking system was established based on results from Club hosted meets throughout the country. Despite Keyano swimmers only having the opportunity to compete in one meet  (the Keyano Summer Finale) we had outstanding success in the rankings.

A National SC Junior Team was selected based on the combined rankings whereby the Top 2 swimmers in each event where selected to the recognition team. The following swimmers were amongst the Top 2 selected:

There were several Keyano swimmmers who also made the Top 10 list in the country

Congratualtions to all swimmers!