Okotoks swimming will once again be on the national stage this summer.
Wells Ginzer earned a spot on Alberta’s 24-swimmer entry at the 2022 Canada Summer Games where the Okotoks Mavericks Swimming ace will be just the second member in club history to make it to the marquee youth sports showcase.
“It’s a pretty high level to get there,” said Mavericks head coach Emma Hesterman. “It’s based on being the fastest and what strokes they do and they only selected 12 boys, 12 girls to represent Alberta.
“He’s a pretty all around athlete so they’re looking at his results from championships and westerns and how he did and he’s very diverse so that’s why he would have been picked.
“And he’s a great racer, he really knows how to race and step it up.”
Ginzer, a Grade 10 student at Foothills Composite, has showcased his competition skills at a number of high profile events over the past month.
Following a debut at the Canadian Swimming Trials, featuring the top swimmers of all ages, Ginzer made his mark at the in Western Canadian Championships Edmonton in late-April.
Ginzer — who attended westerns alongside Mavericks teammates Caden Kotowich, Deon Badenhorst and Emma Hicklin — earned three club records at the event and earned silver in 50m freestyle and bronze in 50m backstroke.
Making the Canada Games, held Aug. 6-21 in Niagara Falls, will be a chance for the Okotokian to expand his horizons.
“I’m kind of vague about this kind of stuff and just go with the flow,” said the 15-year-old Ginzer. “But it’s certainly exciting being able to travel with people that I’m not with usually and I get to travel with other kids that are at my level.
“Right now I’m very local and stay in my pool with my team, but recently and going forward I get to go with people I don’t know as much.”
With new experiences comes uncertainty and Ginzer noted he doesn’t quite know what he’s getting himself into.
“All I know is there’s certainly going to be more positives than negatives,” he added.
“It’s going to be good fun and I’ve worked hard for this.”
He’s just the second member of the swim club to make the Canada Games, joining 2020 Olympian Finlay Knox, who competed at the 2017 event before hitting the international stage.
Ginzer said being among the top athletes his age group means a lot and he hopes he can be a source of inspiration to those following in his footsteps.
“My goal when I came into this was to travel a lot out of swimming and I’m really just going there for the experience,” Ginzer said. “If I win, I win, if I lose, I lose.
“I’m just happy I was able to go out with new people and experience different things.”
Ginzer is also part of next month’s ASPIRE camp, one of 16 Albertans selected, where he’ll have access to top coaches from the western provinces before the swimmers all take part in the famed Mel Zajac International meet in Vancouver.
“That will be a really awesome experience for him to be able to come back and share,” Hesterman said. “It’s going to take him to a whole new level, you just grow and mature when you go to camps like that.”
He wasn’t the only Maverick to earn Swim Alberta selection.
Both Badenhorst and Keton Murphy were selected to the Swim Alberta EMERGE camp, held May 27-29 in the Stampede City.
“It’s that next age group down, 15 and under boys, 14 and under girls,” the coach added. “It’s a really great learning thing for them, the best Alberta coaches, they’ll learn some different training techniques and different coaching ideas.
“And everybody learns from everybody. It really is a collaboration of ideas and being able to share the best with all of the swimmers.”
Mikayla Paul was also fortunate enough to attend the one-day Swim Alberta DISCOVER camp on the first of the month.
“These camps in the past two years we haven’t had them,” Hesterman said. “So it’s really nice that the swimmers get to take part in these.”
As a collective, the Mavericks dive into the Landsperg Automotive Group Spring Invitational in Medicine Hat on May 14.
For more information go to okotoksmavericks.com
