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Hope swim team grabs nine medals at provincials

RiverMonsters end another season on a high note after successful trip to Kamloops
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Hope RiverMonsters Violette Freimark and Eli Reist pose proudly, with the gold, two silver and bronze medals they each won at last weekend’s BC Summer Swimming Association provincial championships, in Kamloops. (Catherine Freimark photo)

Barry Stewart

Hope Standard

The Hope RiverMonsters swim club stepped confidently onto the stage last weekend at the BC Summer Swimming Association’s provincial championships in Kamloops — and showed that they deserved to be there.

Violette Freimark answered her first-place seeding in the Division 3 girls’ 100-metre freestyle by winning gold, in addition to silvers in the 50 free and 50 butterfly, and bronze in the 50 backstroke. Times, in respective order: 1 minute 7.28 seconds, 30.6, 33.61 and 35.95 seconds.

Eli Reist won gold in the Div. 1 boys’ 50-metre backstroke, silvers in the 50 fly and 50 breaststroke, and bronze in the 100 free. Times, in respective order: 43.13, 40.95, 49.88 and 1:23.99.

Ivan Lipnitskiy rounded out Hope’s nine medals with a silver in the boys’ Div. 1 open category 50-metre breaststroke, in a time of 41.35 seconds.

“It was a very successful meet for our swimmers,” said club president, Catherine Freimark. “All of our other swimmers were in the fifth to twenty-third ranking, provincially.”

The RiverMonsters qualified a girls’ relay team for the the Div. 4 4x50 freestyle by including underagers Sonia Au-Yeung from Div. 2 and Violette Freimark from Div. 3 to go along with Div. 4 swimmers Danika Hope and Avery Loring. They finished in tenth place in the province.

After a bit of a hiatus, Hope swimmers can take part in winter maintenance programs, with limited hours of coaching, until next swim season.

READ MORE: Hope’s swim club goes to provincials