Boudreau medals twice at Age Group Nationals

BY JOHN DECOSTE

jdecoste@kentvilleadvertiser.ca

NovaNewsNow.com

With gold and silver medals at Swimming Canada’s Age Group Nationals in Calgary, Luc Boudreau of the Wolfville Tritons has stepped solidly onto the national stage.

On Saturday evening, July 26, Boudreau, 16, entered the final of the 100-metre breaststroke in eighth place after the preliminaries that morning then swam to gold in a time of 1:08.74.

Boudreau swam personal best times in the preliminaries and again in the final.

The following evening, Boudreau swam to a silver-medal finish in the 200 breaststroke. Again, he had two personal best times in the same day: 2:33.38 in the preliminaries and 2:30.06 – more than two seconds faster – in the final.

“Luc had a phenomenal meet, and swam with a lot of guts during both the morning and evening swims,” said Tritons head coach Chris Stone.

“He has long been known in the Atlantic region for his strength in breaststroke and now he’s really started turning heads on the national scene.”

Proud of all our swimmers: coach

The Tritons’ Nicole Campbell also swam well Sunday, placing fifth overall in the 800-metre freestyle in her age group in a time of 9:37.21. Campbell earlier had placed fourth overall in the 400 freestyle. Ceilidh MacPherson was eighth overall in the 1,500 freestyle in her age group Thursday, the opening day of the meet.

“Overall, I’m very proud of all of our swimmers’ accomplishments this weekend,” Stone said in a July 28 release. “They’ve shown tremendous dedication over the course of the season and it has definitely paid off.”

Stone noted that the Tritons “have had more scoring swimmers at this year’s Age Group Nationals, as well as a better score and better placings compared to last year.” He also pointed out how much stronger the team was at the event compared to last season.

“We had seven of nine qualifiers at the meet this year compared with six last season. With those extra swimmers, we’ve also been able to have more swimmers score more points than in the 2006-2007 season.”

The meet wrapped up with a 5,000-metre open water swim Monday morning, July 28. Boudreau placed fourth in his age group, Campbell was fifth, MacPherson placed eighth and Pete Porskamp and Colin Vibert both finished ninth in their respective age groups.