Despite only being in the water for the last month, the Moose Jaw Kinsmen Flying Fins were able to get off to an outstanding start to the season last weekend.

The local swimming club sent 11 swimmers to the Regina Fall Break Out meet in the Queen City and they came back with 80-percent lifetime bests during the races.

“We had a great start to the season,” said Flying Fins head coach Gord Shields.

The meet is split up into two different groups with the Developmental level swimmers, those with ‘A’ provincial standards, and the Age Group level, those with ‘AA’ provincial standards.

Harry Lin was named the Age Group swimmer of the meet for the Flying Fins are registering a lifetime best in four out of his five swims and picking up one silver and one bronze medals.

Shields said he was really impressed with how some of the younger swimmers were able to perform during the meet.

“Madisyn Steeves and Johanael Liew swam 100-percent lifetime bests and showed some great stroke improvements,” he said.  “Another younger swimmer, Kate Waldenberger, had an awesome meet, swimming 100-percent best times and took a lot of time off one of her swims.”

Waldenberger’s 50-metre butterfly race was named the swim of the meet by Shields after she shaved 13.42 seconds off her lifetime best in that race.

Steeves and Liew were the female and male swimmers of the Developmental level for Flying Fins at the meet.

After a very successful 2016-17 season that saw a number of local swimmers compete in national meets, the team is looking for more success this year.

Shields said they’re working on their fundamentals right now before the season really picks up.

“We do a lot of drill work, practice our turns and pushing off the wall, a lot of the breaking the stroke down to focus on each component before we put the whole stroke together,” he said.

The Flying Fins will be heading to Saskatoon in a couple of weeks for another meet before travelling to Winnipeg in Dec. for Man/Sask provincial championship.

Click here for full local results from the Regina Fall Break Out meet.