Making a Splash at the Canadian Swimming Trials

In early April, Ben Loewen ‘22 competed at the 2022 Bell Canadian Swimming Trials which were held at Saanich Commonwealth Place, near Victoria, British Columbia. For six days, Ben competed amongst other top junior (18 years old and under) and senior (19 years old and over) swimmers from across the country. Thanks to his stellar performance, he was selected to be on the Junior National Team. He will represent Canada at the Junior Pan Pacific Championships in Hawaii this August. 

The Canadian Swimming Trials began each day with preliminary trials in the morning, of which the top eight times regardless of age would go on to compete in the evening’s A Final. Junior and senior swimmers who do not place in the top 8 times in the morning’s preliminaries will instead compete in the evening’s Junior Finals. Junior swimmers competing in the A Final would receive two placements: one for juniors and one for seniors. 

Ben qualified for the A Final for five of the seven events he swam. He brought home several medals from the events, and his final placements are:

Throughout the pandemic, Ben has been able to train due to the province’s high-performance athlete exception. However, his club’s home pool has been closed, so he has been commuting to the Toronto Pan Am Sports Centre to train, which certainly adds more travel time to and fro! A typical week involves about 20 hours of training for Ben, which is split between 18 hours in the pool and two hours of strength training.

“Ben’s teachers have been incredibly supportive, encouraging him and accommodating his missed time and need to stay online,” says Shannon Morrison, Ben’s mother. “We could not be more grateful to Greenwood for fostering that kind of support for the ‘whole child’.”

After graduating from Greenwood, Ben will pursue swimming at the collegiate level with the Varsity Blues at the University of Toronto while attending UofT’s Rotman Commerce program in the fall.

Ben will attend the Junior National Team’s training camp in Vancouver at the end of May. Good luck, Ben!