The University of Lethbridge Pronghorns swim team returned home with two medals and two more qualifiers for the CIS Championships (Feb. 20-22, University of Toronto) after weekend performances at the Canada West championship meet.
Senior captain Ryan Thornley earned the lone individual medal, winning bronze in the 50-metre butterfly event on Friday night. Thornley was also a member of the Horns' 400-metre freestyle relay team that produced a bronze medal later in the meet.
“We had a good championship with our best point total since the 1990’s and our first relay medal in many years," says Pronghorns head coach Peter Schori. “Both the men’s and women’s teams improved on last year’s scoring and added new CIS qualifiers. Overall I’m pleased with our team's performance and we took another step closer to the top programs in the CIS. I think the men’s free relay will be very competitive at nationals next month.”
Thornley narrowly missed a second individual medal in the 50-metre freestyle, finishing fourth by just two one-hundredths of a second. He was also sixth in the 100-metre freestyle.
The Horns men’s relay finished fourth in the 400m medley relay and fifth in the 800m free relay.
Other notable performances on the men’s side: Nick van der Sloot finished fifth in the 50-metre backstroke and sixth in the 100-metre backstroke; David Errington earned three top six finishes with a fifth place performance in the 50-metre breaststroke and sixth place in both the 100 and 200-metre breaststroke; Tiha Konyves also had two ‘A’ final appearances and finished sixth in both the 50-metre freestyle and backstroke events.
On the women’s side, Keri-Ann Cowan led the way with two top-five finishes. She placed fourth in the 50-metre backstroke and fifth in the 100-metre backstroke. Also making ‘A’ final appearances were Kara DeClark and Kiara Bodell. DeClark finished fifth in the 50-metre backstroke and Bodell was seventh in the 200-metre backstroke.
On the relay side, the women had a strong meet, finishing fourth in both the 800 and 400-metre freestyle relays and sixth in the 400-metre medley relay.
In the team standings, the Horns women’s side moved up one spot from last year’s result and finished fourth in the conference with 294.5 points, while the men finished fifth again this season but improved their point total from 293.5 last season to 310 this year and closed the gap between themselves and the Victoria Vikes.
With a couple more weeks left for other team members to meet the CIS qualifying times, the Horns currently have 11 swimmers qualified for the CIS Championships in Toronto.