Aside from the wretched weather for the second straight year, this year’s Homecoming was one to remember for the Laurier community. Purple and gold dominated streets, houses, apartments, front lawns and University Stadium on Saturday.
However, streets, houses, apartments, front lawns and the stadium weren’t the only locations that were crammed with Laurier students and alumni, so was the Laurier pool.
The annual Laurier Alumni Swim Meet provided a fitting re-opening to the pool after it was closed until Sept. 20 for renovations and helped the Hawks start off their season.
“It was fun as always and it’s great to see the old swimmers come back out and support the team” said head coach Nandi Kormendi.
The Laurier Swim Team is looking to have a breakout 2010-11 season as the team has almost doubled in size compared to last year, focusing on their ranking in Ontario University Athletics (OUA) competition.
“We really want to improve our rankings at OUAs this year,” said men’s team captain Tom Rose. “We believe with the depth, numbers and the quality of swimmers coming in, we’ll have a much greater shot at achieving this.”
The team came eighth last year at OUAs but according to Kormendi that ranking should improve.
“We’re a totally different team,” he said. “We’ve got much better quality from top to bottom this year. We’ve always had really good swimmers in the program, however, we are starting to get much larger and much more competitive.”
Despite Saturday’s light atmosphere, Kormendi has high expectations for this year’s team.
“I’d really like to see our girls finish top three at OUAs and hopefully come in the top eight at [CIS finals],” he said. “As for the men’s team, it would be great to see them beat some local rivals.”
Amy Hucal and women’s team captains Brittany Shaw and Whitney Rich lead the way for the women’s team, each of whom will have an impact in both leadership and skill. On the men’s side three key veterans lead the way as well: Nathan Frick and captains Rose and Matt Pederson.
The team’s first competition will come at Brock University on Saturday, Oct. 16 when they compete in the OUA Sprint Meet.
