Twelve-year-old Masha Wood spends at least nine hours each week working on her swimming technique.
Her elite group workload increases when she joins her Prince George Barracudas Swim Club teammates in events like this past weekend's Dental Moose Meet. The payoff for Wood is she's become fast enough in the water to represent the Barracudas at big meets like the long course age group championships coming up in June in Chilliwack.
But there is a price to pay for all that success, and it's unavoidable.
"You always smell like chlorine," said Wood.
Chloe Vertue, her 11-year-old Barracudas clubmate, says the most difficult aspect of being a competitive swimmer is having to say no to her other friends when they try to include her in their after-school activities.
"Sometimes when you want to hang out with your friends and it's a Friday night, you can't, but that's OK because swimming is like life for me," said Vertue.
Wood and Vertue both find it frustrating when they're trying to achieve a personal best time in an event and it takes a full season for that to happen.
Liberty Vaughn, 13, says she would like to try a few other sports once she becomes high school-aged, but for now she's quite happy being a full-time Barracuda. Vaughn is having a blast hanging out with her friends Wood and Vertue and she's getting the results that show she's making progress.
"All of my races were pretty good this meet," said Vaughn. "I really liked the 200 fly I did (Sunday). I was tired of course, I like doing it long course better than short course."
The three-day Dental Moose Meet attracted 270 swimmers and provided the three girls their first racing test of the season in the 50-metre pool at the Aquatic Centre and they were encouraged by their results.
"All three girls have really good swimming skills," said Barracudas coach Jason Smith, who coaches them as part of the club's elite group. "Chloe has the talent, and Liberty and Wood both have a background in gymnastics and their body awareness for any sport they want to do is going to be easier for them. Physically they're stronger because of that."
Vaughn already had a couple years invested in the Prince George Gymnastics Club's recreation program before she joined the Barracudas five years ago. Wood was in the competitive stream of gymnastics and did both sports until it became too time consuming and she narrowed it down to swimming.
"Gymnastics training gives you lots endurance because it's a very hard sport to perfect every skill," said Wood. "Every day, when I was doing gymnastics I would go home (from school), eat and go straight to gymnastics and after that I'd go right away to swimming. I did that for five days (per week) for a lot of years and that gave me a lot of endurance and strength and flexibility to go faster in swimming. It helped me a lot."
Vertue joined the club a four years ago after three years training with a club in Smithers. Her 13-year-old sister Jordan is now one of the top Barracuda swimmers. Chloe's efforts to try to keep pace with her sister and also match the intensity of Wood and Vaughn, who share her lane in training, provides incentive to work hard in practice.
"Sometimes they push me and sometimes I can push them, which helps a lot," said Vertue. "I love swimming and it's really helpful when my coaches and teammates are encouraging me to go faster and do better in everything.
"My sister is very good at swimming. She makes all the high-level competitions and it's really challenging for me to get to where she is. I have lots of people that push me."
All three girls are aware of Haley Black, 23, a former Barracuda who set a new Canadian record in the 50-metre butterfly in December at the short course world championships in Hangzhou, China. Black is a three-time NCAA All-American who graduated from Auburn University in Alabama and now trains at the High Performance Centre in Vancouver.
"I think that's really cool a Barracuda swimmer made that high of a level of swimming," said Wood. feel just like never giving up and always try your best. I'm trying to get scholarship for swimming and then I'll move on from there and see where I get."
The Dental Moose Meet began the long course season. Wood has made it her goal to qualify for the long course provincial championships and join Vaughn and Vertue at the meet in Victoria, July 4-7.
