Barry Gray, the Hamilton Spectator

Burlington Synchronized Swimming Club members perform their routine yesterday.

The first three months may seem easy compared to the next three weeks for the Burlington Synchronized Swimming Club tier 6-7 varied team.

The high-calibre, mixed ages team will be under a three-week gold rush according to coach Janet Meldrum to further polish their routine prior to the provincial championships in Etobicoke Feb. 20.

The BSSC finished third out of four yesterday at the McMaster University pool at the provincial trials with a score of 68.1667 points, but it was just 1.333 points back of the first place Gloucester team.

"That is just a matter of one or two of the judges' scores," said Meldrum.

"Our goal is to win the provincials and our dream goal is to come in the top six at the nationals."

Meldrum had mapped out the patterns of the routine before going on a maternity leave and left it to her assistants Jennifer Saunders, Jennie Burgess and Ellie Kowalczyk to get it working.

After Meldrum returned, she fine tuned the routine. "They went from no experience swimming with each other to where they are today," said Meldrum.

"It's been amazing with their turnaround and their ability to move forward is remarkable."

Stephanie Saunders, one of the team members, said the team is confident of improving their standing at the provincial meet.

"If we train really hard in the next couple of weeks, we can probably do this," said Saunders, 13, a grade 8 student at Hamilton's Westview School.

She said perfecting the routine wasn't too hard once the team learned the patterns.

"Once it's all done, you just drill it until you know what you're doing and afterwards it gets harder," she said.

Other members of the team are Hilary Baines, Alicia Wolridge, Meaghan Danielson, Katie Gandy, Sam Hobbes, LeeAnn Barna and Michelle Reichert.

The team is composed of girls of different ages from 13 to 17.

The BSSC hosted the two-in-one meet at McMaster, which started on Friday with an Ontario Winter Games trial for tier 4, tier 5 and combo teams to try to qualify for the London competition March 11-14.

On Saturday, tier 7 figures and duets competed in preparation for the provincials and then the tier 6 duets, solos and varied teams had their competition yesterday.

In the tier 6 duets, the pair of Baines and Wolridge, swimming to music from the film Chicago, placed fourth with 65.5 points, while third year swimmers Barna and Reichert were second in the tier 6 open competition with 65.0 points.

There were also lower tier competitions.

The BSSC did particularly well in the tier 3 figures where second year swimmer Melisa Mitic placed first with a score of 56.25 points. Her teammate, Kaitlin Buis, came seventh with 55.417 points and Robin Lynch was eighth with 55.4168 points.

BSSC's Aleksa Paphahil was fourth in the tier 2 competition with 56.5835 points, while Morgan Leblanc was 13th with 55.6668 points.

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