Queen’s Artistic Swimming Club swam circles around their competition, securing first place in the Experienced Team Free event at the Canadian University Artistic Swimming League Championships, held in Victoria, B.C. from March 21 to 23.
Head Coach of the Artistic Swimming team, Maddie Walker-Byron, sat down with The Journal to reflect on the team’s achievement and the bright future of Queen’s Artistic Swimming.
“I think I speak for myself and the whole team that we’re extremely excited. We obviously had the goal at the beginning of the season, but it’s hard to know how realistic it is. And so, when we were able to hit that goal, I think we’re just almost overwhelmed with excitement and, not disbelief, but a little bit of ‘wow, we did that,’” Walker-Byron said.
Queen’s routine in the Team Free event earned them 193.238 points, with a degree of difficulty of 35.550. McGill University finished second with 189.1098 points, and the University of British Columbia placed third with 177.9804 points.
Walker-Byron noted that watching a routine get scored live is a nerve-racking experience—especially after finishing first in the preliminary round.
“We had our prelim swim, and we were in first going into the finals, but we knew it was gonna be a really big fight to hold on to that first place in the finals. We knew we had to give it everything we got, so the scores were tight, but regardless of the outcome, we were gonna be happy,” Walker-Byron said.
The Gaels’ theme for this year’s routine was Greek Gods, and Walker-Byron noted that much focus was directed towards introducing innovative choreography to the student-athletes.
“First semester was really based on choreography. We spent that semester trying to come up with unique choreography, using the difficulty system in our sport, trying to be creative with it,” she said.
“Our hard work really paid off from the beginning of the year, really putting our heads on and trying to come up with unique and innovative choreography that would stand out from the other teams.”
The Artistic Swimming team is comprised mainly of first-year student-athletes, which as Walker-Byron noted, bodes well for the future of the program—and opens the door for ambitious goals.
“We have a lot of first years on the team, so with three years left with such a big group, we’re really looking forward to pushing for more championships and also hopefully getting the overall school score. We can become not just national champs in our [Team Free] routine but also national champions as an overall university.”
Artistic Swimming is a sport that requires immense technical skill, physical strength, and synchronized execution. Under Walker-Byron’s leadership, this dedicated and talented team of student-athletes is looking forward to adding more national titles to their name.
Tags
All final editorial decisions are made by the Editor(s) in Chief and/or the Managing Editor. Authors should not be ed, targeted, or harassed under any circumstances. If you have any grievances with this article, please direct your comments to [email protected].