Inuvik's swim team, the Mackenzie Muskrats, ended their season with quite the splash in Yellowknife, bringing home 51 pieces of hardware after the Feb 21-23 NWT 2020 Territorial Championships wrapped up last month.
Overall through the meet the Muskrats achieved best times on 59 of their races, a rate of 80 per cent!
"They did quite well," said coach Vince Brown. "We had quite a few top placings and three swimmers that qualified for North American Indigenous Games. We had seven aggregate medals out of 30 potential medals, so considering the size of the community and the swim club I think we outperformed there."
In the end, Kierra McDonald, Tatum Mistakenchief, Ramona Wolki, Cooper Jenks, River Keegan-Drennan and Lochlan Adams-Conway claimed medals in aggregate points total. In the end, Inuvik brought back 22 gold, 17 silver and 12 bronze medals.
Among the highest improvement seen were Kaycee Campbell cutting her total time by 112.1 seconds, River Keegan-Drennan cutting his overall time by 64.63 seconds, Malakai Keegan-Drennan cutting his time by 52.18 seconds, Ramona Wolki cutting her by 48.53 seconds and Marshall Brown cutting his time by 37.39 seconds.
"We had over a dozen club records set," said Brown. "It was a really good meet, considering we had a long closure of the pool in 2018-19. They've come back quite strong. They really represented Inuvik very well."
Although several athletes qualified for the North American Indigenous Games, it has now been postponed for one year. Regardless, Brown said making the team showed the athletic capacity of his athletes.
"It's a little sad the season had to end this way, but a lot of the kids will still be around to carry on next fall," he said. "And next year they'll have both the NAIG and the Canada games to perform.
"Overall we've got a really good group of volunteers, parents and coaches who help us keep successful. It's great."