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Barracudas feast at regional qualifiers

The Burnaby Barracudas have sent a strong contingent of 51 swimmers to the B.C. summer swimming championships in Kamloops this weekend, where the best swimmers from across the province will meet for the final competition of the summer season.
Barracuda relay
Celebrating their win in the Div. 2 girls freestyle relay are members of the Burnaby Barracudas at last week's regionals.

The Burnaby Barracudas have sent a strong contingent of 51 swimmers to the B.C. summer swimming championships in Kamloops this weekend, where the best swimmers from across the province will meet for the final competition of the summer season.
The route to the provincials took members through the regionals last week, and involved a lot of hardware in each of the club’s three disciplines.
In water polo, the ’Cudas under-12, u16 and u18 teams won gold at the regional championships to earn their provincial tournament passes. The u14 team won silver and will be competing at the provincials as a wild card entry. Burnaby also had three divers advancing to the championships with gold medals at the regionals – Mihnea Ichim, Stacey Panfilova and Vaughn Sandquist.
In swimming, the Barracudas qualified in 77 individual races and 14 relays at the Simon Fraser qualifying meet in Coquitlam two weeks ago. In the process of doing so, they set three relay and six individual regional records.   
Leading the record-setting ’Cudas in the individual events was Fernando Lu, who set new marks in the 50-metre butterfly (35.34), and 50m (32.75) and 100m freestyle (1:10.52) events.
Other individual record setters were Jesse Hua in the 50m backstroke (42.07) and Adrian Vanderhelm, club coach, in the 50m (25.52) and 100m fly (56.26).  Lu joined forces with Torin Quan, Joseph Skinder and Sandquist to break the previous regional record in the Div. 2 free relay with a time of 2:24.45.    
Not to be outdone, the Div. 4 boys relay, featuring Justin Lee, Cayden Liang, Conlin Duong and Eric Ryu, set regional records in both the medley (2:08.02) and free relays (1:54.37).  
The team emerged with numerous personal bests and awards.  In addition to Lu’s gold medal finishes (50 back, fly, free, 100 free), Hua (100 individual medley, 50 back, free, 100 free) and Vanderhelm (50 and 100 fly, 50 and 100 free), Justin Lee (200 IM, 100 breast, 50 and 100 free), Cameron Dickson (50 and 100 fly, 50 and 100 free), Joseph Skinder (50 breast, free, 100 free and IM) and Abigail Skinder (50 back, fly, free, 100 free) all finished a perfect four-for-four in individual events.
Joining them at the provincials by qualifying in four individual events were Adam Graham, Cayden Liang, Ethan Liang, Jimmy Song, Amy Zhu and Eva Zhu.
Other multi-medal winners included: Conlin Duong, Olivia Graham, Torin Quan, Wilbur Ruckman-Utting, Aaron Ryu, Eric Ryu, Natthan Stein and Garret Yeo. Also qualifying for single events were: Natalia Blazevic, Lucas Chen, Mihnea Ichim, Joanne Lee, Stacey Panfilova, Anna-Marie Skinder, Mitra Suseendran, Nicholas Tran and Edward Wong.
The Barracudas also qualified numerous divisional relay teams at the regional meet.
The 2017 B.C. Summer Swimming Championships are being held at the Canada Games Aquatic Centre in Kamloops this weekend.