Athletes applaud program’s coaching, development
Photo courtesy of Vikes Swimming.
A record-setting 26 Vikes swimmers will compete at the University of Toronto on March 6 for the U Sports championships. Fifteen women and eleven men makes for the most total swimmers the Vikes have ever had qualify for nationals in UVic history.
While the Vikes boast high-end U Sport swimmers who qualify every year — such as school record holders Erin Epp, Keir Ogilvie, and Ricky Millns — the record-setting 26 qualifiers this season indicates growth and development for the program as a whole.
“We’re really good at developing swimmers into U Sports qualifiers — especially this year,” said third-year Vikes swimmer and commerce student Ryan Murphy, who qualified for this year’s nationals at the Canada West Championships in November.
Murphy credits much of UVic’s recent success in developing swimmers with the program’s coach restructuring over the past few seasons. As an assistant coach in 2020, Ryan Clouston assumed the primary duties of day-to-day programming for the athletes, before being promoted to head coach this season. Peter Vizsolyi — after 41 years as head coach — now assists in a technical coaching role.
Murphy’s own story is an example of UVic’s ability to develop swimmers into U Sports championship qualifiers. After concluding his high school swimming career in Vernon B.C., Murphy said he was “on the fence [about] whether it was time to hang up the suit.”
“I wasn’t necessarily the fastest in the bunch,” he adds.
At the time, Murphy hadn’t yet completed a time trial swim fast enough to qualify for U Sports competitions — something most collegiate recruits accomplish as seniors in high school. Regardless, Clouston invited Murphy to join the Vikes, hoping to develop him into a faster swimmer. It didn’t take long.
In his first season as a Vike, Murphy met the U Sports qualification time standard, allowing him to compete at nationals where he made the ‘B’ final in the 200 metre backstroke.
“It was a big shock,” said Murphy. “I was like, maybe I’ll [qualify] by second year, if I really put my heart and soul into it. And I had it within the three months.”
Murphy said the quality of coaching, the program’s willingness to tailor its training to each athlete, and support from his teammates are key reasons why he’s qualified for nationals in each of his three collegiate seasons.
Freshman Vikes swimmer and engineering student Mackenzie Hurd has a similar story. Despite competing at the Western Canadian swimming championships in her senior year of high school, Hurd — like Murphy — hadn’t yet met the U Sports qualification time standard. And although Hurd wanted to swim for a Canadian university varsity team, the offers weren’t flooding in.
“UVic was one of the only places that wanted me on their team,” said Hurd. “Because [most] teams want you to have a U Sport time [standard] coming into club varsity, which I didn’t have yet.”
But Clouston and his coaching staff were willing to take on a swimmer who required a more developmental runway, and again, it paid off.
On Feb. 1, in a dual meet against Simon Fraser University at the Commonwealth Place pool, Hurd won the 50 metre backstroke, and more importantly secured the coveted U Sports qualifying standard time to send her to nationals in March.
“I wasn’t going into that race expecting to get the time,” said Hurd. “But when I swam it, it felt fast. And then I touched the wall, and I knew that I got [it] because all of my teammates were cheering so loudly.”
This season, the Vikes swimming program bolstered its coaching staff by adding three female assistant coaches: Alexx Greenfield, Grace MacDonald, and Allison Hampton. This decision, given the program’s record-setting 26 U Sports qualifiers, has also paid immediate dividends.
“Bringing them on has been really beneficial,” said Murphy. “And having a younger coaching staff has been more of a connection point [for athletes].”
These extra eyes on the pool deck during training is something that Hurd said directly benefited her.
“All three of [the new female assistant coaches] have been super helpful and given me tips on my freestyle and backstroke to help me get faster,” said Hurd, who’s impressed by the volume of individual coaching and feedback she received as a freshman.
With nine training sessions a week, Hurd leveraged her coaches’ feedback throughout the season into a plane ticket to the biggest swim meet of her life. She heads to nationals with 25 other Vikes swimmers, all looking to help their team improve on last year’s sixth and tenth place finishes, on the women’s and men’s sides respectively.
And as a third-year qualifier? Murphy simply intends to soak it all in.
“I’m really excited to see how our team performs because of all the new people that have qualified,” said Murphy. “I’ll fight hard in my races, but I’m going to probably find it more fulfilling to watch everybody else succeed around me and be part of that.”
