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Impressive showing for Mustangs at CIS

March 5, 2011
By Julian Mei

After finishing first and second respectively at the Ontario University Athletics Championships, the Mustangs women’s and men’s swim teams both put together impressive showings at the Canadian Interuniverity Sport National Championships held in Calgary on Feb. 25-26.

The women’s team placed seventh in a field of 19 and the men finished eighth in a field of 21 teams. The individual highlight of the event was a silver-bronze placing by Jake Armstrong and Bryn Jones in the 50m breaststroke.

Coach Paul Midgley was satisfied with the teams’ overall effort at the meet.

“[We] only [had] a few missed swims in terms of scoring points. A couple of tenths of a second better in a few events could have doubled our medal total,” Midgley said.

However, even with the satisfying performance, Midgley is already setting his sights on the potential for next year’s team.

“I think we will be better. We had a lot of rookies this year that will be better next year. But we will be losing three key veterans to graduation and they will be tough to replace,” Midgley said referring to Hayley Nell, Amber Hutchinson and men’s captain Bryn Jones.

All three athletes will be leaving Western with some very fond memories, especially Nell who had the opportunity to compete along side her younger sister, Shannon.

“I wasn’t sure how I would feel having my sister on the team with me this year, but looking back on it I wouldn’t have wanted to spend it any other way. It was a lot of fun, and great having her around. There were a few times where the captain/sister boundary was a challenge, but for the most part it wasn’t a problem,” Hayley said.

The highlight of the season for Bryn Jones actually occurred in a losing effort.

“I’ve broken records and won gold medals but the highlight for me this season was coming second by .3 [seconds] in my 200m breast stroke at CIS [nationals]. I swam a technically perfect race and left everything in the pool, so getting beat never felt so good,” Jones said.

Jones was also optimistic about Western’s future in the pool even though he will no longer be a part of it. Jones believes that even though schools such as Calgary and UBC dominate on a national level, Western’s day will inevitably come.

“We’ve consistently improved over the last five years and I believe it’s just a matter of time before we win a national title,” he said.

Coach Midgley was equally optimistic.

“UBC and Calgary both have national training centre affiliations and it will take a special set of circumstances for us to get by them as things stand now, but we are working on changing that.”

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