The Cochrane Piranhas are thrilled to expand their club for the 2018 swim season. 

Sitting at 64 swimmers last year, Kevin Fitzsimmons, Cochrane Piranhas Club President, shares they are hoping to see membership grow to 75-100 members depending on age and functional pool usage for training. "We have opportunities in all of our age group levels. Some of the issues we're trying to sort out right now and a piece of information we don't know yet is what space is available through the pool because the aquatic bookings coordinator is trying to balance requests from multiple user groups. In mid-December, we should have an idea how much space we have and that combined with what we coaches can take on in different age groups should cap the club for this year."

If you have a child/youth interested in joining the Piranhas, Fitzsimmons shares they just need to have a basic skill set and coaches will build on that. "If your swimmer can swim one length of the pool more or less unassisted even if it's sort of doggy paddle that is the requirement. I know my boys after two months in the pool, I could hardly recognize them."

Not only are the Piranhas excited to add members to the roster, it will also allow them to compete against some larger clubs throughout the region. "We would like to be able to put the squeeze on some of the bigger Calgary clubs, for instance, the biggest club in Calgary which is consistently the provincial title in terms of first place finishes, they have 250 swimmers so it is hard to compete with that. We would like to be able to send more swimmers to regionals and more swimmers to provincials and now that we have more space, we have the opportunity to do that."

The Jayman Aquatic Centre will also provide an exciting 'first' opportunity for the club. "We are very excited to be able to host a swim meet in Cochrane for the first time. The old pool was not quite long enough to meet Swim Canada metre regulations and it also didn't have enough length, so we have never actually had a swim meet in Cochrane that is official. We're excited to open that up and invite our region and all those swimmers to Cochrane to see our facility and town."

All interested swimmers and abilities are being considered to join. You can obtain more Info about the club, swim season, and swimmer/parent commitments from Kiley Parker, the registrar, at registrarpiranhas@gmail.com or check out their website here.