There was 275 swimmers from across Saskatchewan and Alberta in downtown Moose Jaw this past weekend as the Kinsmen Flying Fins hosted the 51st annual Mike Mintenko Summerfest meet.

The local club had 30 swimmers hit the pool under plenty of sunshine for their annual home pool meet at the Phyllis Dewar Outdoor Pool.

“We’ve had a fantastic meet, the weather has cooperated awesome with us this year, we’ve had teams from out-of-province, which is great, and all the swimmers are having a great time,” said Gord Shields, head coach of the Flying Fins.

There was a number of strong performances from the local swimmers, but Shields said he was most impressed with the younger swimmers in the club and how they were able to compete in the meet.

“Our younger swimmers are doing a lot of personal best times and placing really well,” said Shields.

“They’ve had an awesome year and really improved throughout the year. We have about 12 swimmers that moved up from the non-competitive program to the competitive program and they’ve just shown great stroke improvement.”

Makaya Arnott was one of those young swimmers that had a strong meet, as the nine-year-old posted personal best times in four of her six races.

“I’ve had lots of fun this weekend,” she said. “I improved on some times, which was my goal. I’ve been working on my turns and dives, which help you go faster.”

Arnott is in her second year of swimming competitively and is really enjoying it. She said she’s already set some goals for herself moving forward.

“I want to get an ‘A’ time,” said Arnott.

10-year-old Sarah Gross also captured personal best times in four of her six races, including shaving off over ten seconds in her 100 and 200-metre freestyle races.

“I’ve been having a lot of fun, it’s been great, I’ve been doing really good,” she said.

In the 100m free, Gross finished in a time of 1:41.10, which was 11.30 seconds better than her previous personal best time.

“It was great, I was really proud of myself when I finished,” said Gross.

Sarah’s older brother Cole had the swim of the meet in his 200m individual medley, which he finished in a time of 3:38.06. That was 53.56 seconds lower than his previous personal best.

The Flying Fins’ female swimmer of the meet was Madisyn Steeves, who had personal best times in four of six races, while the male swimmer of the meet was Kieran Johnson, who posted 100-percent personal best times, including shaving double digit seconds off all races.

Johnson was 50.74 seconds better in the 200m freestyle and took 49.49 seconds off his 100m backstroke.

Click here for full results from the meet.

The focus for the Flying Fins is now on some national championship meets over the next few months with Cadence Johns and Elyssa Tacchi heading to the Canadian Junior Championship and the 2017 Canada Summer Games. Rainer and Cadence Olson will be making their way to the North American Indigenous Games in July.