A meet the Cochrane Comets have been building towards hosting for years is just a week away.

The town's year-round competitive swim club is hosting the Comets Distance and IM Challenge, Dec. 16-17, their first meet in the new Jayman Built Aquatic Centre; their first meet ever since the club was established in 1993.

The centre is a major step up for competitive swimmers here in Cochrane and the meet next weekend will be the first of several to showcase what the future holds for the sport in an expanded, more accommodating centre. It's no simple matter to host a meet and getting it right the first time is important to establish a solid reputation moving forward.

"We've been working on getting this meet organized and executed for two years," explains Head Coach Danielle Genung. "We had a parent membership who had to the learn on mass how to officiate events. There's a lot of volunteer requirements from parents in order to execute a meet so the membership has come together and it has been a lot of work to do this. But we're excited, it's going to go very well."

Holding a long course meet was a strategic decision. It's a smaller one involving six clubs and 180 competitors that will allow the club's volunteers catch the rhythm of hosting a competition. Yet, it does not take away from the magnitude of the challenge for the swimmers. Long course (distance) swimming is a far different animal for competitors.

"Swimming a 50 is a lot of different than swimming a 1,500," explains Genung. "They need guts, they need courage, they need mental focus. They need a whole gamut of skills in order to execute those swims well, so that's what we have really been working on."

The new timing system and scoreboard the club acquired with the assistance of Community Enhancement funding from the Alberta government has arrived and should be installed next week in time for the meet. Before the start of the Saturday afternoon session, there will be a brief ceremony that includes greetings from the mayor. It is understood, Santa will also be dropping by.

Genung says it's a fast pool and she's expecting to see some equally fast times to come out of the meet.

"It's going to be quite the spectacle to see. The whole pool deck will be full of kids."

Full decks of competitive swimmers will become a common sight for the Comets. When Genung became head coach five years ago they had 37 members and It wasn't long before they maxed out at 48, the most that could be accommodated at the Big Hill pool.

Now with an expanded program, they boast just over 100 members and plan to grow again next season and likely again the season thereafter. With the waiting list continuing to grow, Genung believes it's not far-fetched for the membership to reach 200 within the first two years at the new pool.

"We've got a long waiting list already and the people just keep coming in," she says

Right now they are accepting registrations for an eight-week spring program that starts in May and it's already starting to fill.

"Those families will get the first right of refusal to sign up next season, so we encourage people to up for the spring session."

They also have a second swim meet scheduled here, the Comets Speed Meet, for May 12-13.

What the new pool has allowed them to expand upon is the pre-competitive program that prepares swimmers to advance to their competitive squads for those up to the age of 17. On the competitive side, they already have a number who have qualified for the provincials. The Southern Alberta short course provincials are in February in Calgary and Medicine Hat hosts the long course provincials in June. From there they can advance further to higher level meets, including the Westerns and Nationals.