The McGill Artistic Swimming team hosted the McGill Invitational Meet on Nov. 22 at Memorial Pool. The athletes excelled at home, securing podium positions in all five events they entered.

Artistic Swimming, made up of 36 athletes, is divided into a novice group and an experienced group based on swimmers’ exposure to the sport prior to university. Each group competes in three events—solo, duet/trio, and team—while the experienced category also includes an Athlete With Disability solo, bringing the total to seven events in the meet.

Head Coach Lindsay Duncan has led the program since 2013, and entered this eleventh season with a clear approach for the year’s opening competition. In an interview with The Tribune before the invitational, Coach Duncan discussed her expectations for the team in their first meet of the season. 

“My goal is for everybody to go into this event with confidence,” Duncan said. “Also, since this meet doesn’t qualify us for anything, it is a good chance for us to try out new things and be a little bit risky.”

In the second event of the day, ten teams from across three schools competed in the experienced duet/trio category, with McGill entering four duets.

Kayla Drew and Alexa Vaillancourt, both in their third year in Kinesiology, have competed as duet partners for three consecutive years at McGill. In addition to their duet event, they also participate in the experienced group performance.

In a pre-performance interview with The Tribune, Drew and Vaillancourt shared how they hoped to feel about the competition in retrospect.

“Being proud of what we did is very important to us, and [feeling] like we tried our best,” Vaillancourt said.

“We’re going in with the highest degree of difficulty,” Drew added. “We’re really hoping not to base mark. That’s like a massive goal of ours, throughout all the meets, not just this weekend.” 

In artistic swimming, a competitor’s final score is calculated based on three categories: Difficulty, execution, and artistic impression. If any move is performed incorrectly, it will result in a base mark—scoring the lowest possible points for the difficulty score.

Despite some nerves and a tough practice before competition day, Drew and Vaillancourt were satisfied with their performance and hope to stay on top of the competitor pool. The pair achieved their goal of performing base mark-free, securing first place for McGill and scoring a total of 148.9000. 

“A ritual is that the last practice before a competition always goes whack, and yesterday, that was what happened. Showing up today, you’re like, ‘Okay, we’re not gonna repeat what happened yesterday,’” Vaillancourt expressed.

“We know the competition here today are the same competitors we have to look out for through the season,” Drew stated. “It’s good to know that we can achieve our goals so early.”

In the third event of the day, Hailey Hertzog secured a silver medal for McGill in the novice solo category. Hertzog scored a total of 83.2767, approximately five points shy of the event winner, Lauren El-Awadi from the University of Ottawa.

Hertzog had entered the meet with one clear goal: Reach the podium. She expressed her overwhelming joy at achieving her goal in an interview with The Tribune.

“I was so nervous leading up to it, but everyone was so supportive,” Hertzog said. “When I finally competed, I was like, ‘Okay, I did it!’ I just feel amazing.”

In the experienced solo category, Sonia Dunn delivered one of the day’s highest-scoring performances, earning 160.2146 points to take first place ahead of teammate Clara Thomas, who finished second with 147.6771 points.

In the final two events of the day, the McGill novice and experienced teams placed third and first respectively, concluding their successful home invitational in front of a packed crowd of family and friends. The experienced team delivered the highest-scoring event of the competition, earning 172.8396 points. With a medal in every event they entered, the team opened their season on a confident note, and expressed hope to carry that momentum into the rest of the year.

“My dream would be to have a first-place finisher in each of the events that we enter,” Coach Duncan said. “It’s not always possible, but we are using this competition to build the path to it.”