Members of the Gloucester Synchro Tier 6 team pose tiwht the hardware they won at the Ontario Tier Synchronized Swimming Championships in Nepean on the weekend. Fred Sherwin/Photo

The Gloucester Synchronized Swimming Club’s Tier 6 team successfully defended their provincial title on Sunday in front of several hundred cheering fans at the Nepean Sportsplex.

The team of Erika Bryson, Kiera Bloom, Ivy Follett, Laura Clark, Kathleen Eldridge, Julia Roberts, Christina Lamontagne, Vanessa Graham and alternate Ellen Walarchuk relied on their varied patterns, superior transitions and a greater degree of difficulty to beat out teams from Durham and Waterloo to take the gold medal.

The win capped a busy year for the group of 13- and 14-year-old girls who recently competed at the Canadian Synchronized Swimming Championships in Toronto, finishing 13th.

“It feels really good to win,” said team member Vanessa Graham. “We worked really hard this year. Swimming at divisionals and nationals helped boost our confidence. I think it made it easier for us.”

While several members on the team will be moving up to Tier 7 next year, Graham and duet partner Kathleen Eldrige will among those staying behind to try and win a third successive gold medal.

“I don’t think there will be any (additional) pressure. If we work hard we should be able to bring it home again next year,” said Graham.

Besides winning the team gold medal, Bryson, Roberts, Clark, Lamontagne, Wakarchuk, and Ivy Follett along with Heather Follett and Erica Tice also won the bronze medal in the combo event. In the Tier 6 solo competition, Heather Potter came in 6th and Keira Bloom finished 13th.

Not to be outdone by the success of the Tier 6 squad, the Tier 1 team made up of Sofia Aboo, Carlie Cholette, Melika Bellehumeur, Amelie Rozon, Alianne Rozon, Amelie Proulz, Christina Phillips, Isabelle Savage and Caroline Theriault beat out 21 other teams to win the silver medal. Theriault also won the silver medal in the solo figures competition.

For Theriault, who is in her first year of competitive swimming, winning two silver medals came as a complete surprise.

“I was hoping to do my best, swim 100 per cent and just have fun,” said Theriault who swam against 168 fellow competitors. “When I found out I was going to get a medal my legs felt like jello. It was very exciting.”

The 11-year-old Orléans resident only began synchronized swimming three years ago after attaining all her Red Cross swimming levels.

“She had a choice between competitive swimming and synchronized swimming but she never understood why someone would want to touch the wall faster than someone else. When she found out that she would be on a team in synchro she wanted to do it right away,” says her father Richard Theriault.

In other results, the Tier 3 team won bronze, while the Tier 4 and Tier 5 teams finished seventh and ninth respectively.

(The is story was made possible thanks to the generous support of our local business partners.)