The University of Toronto swim team is looking to make the 2004-2005 season one to remember. The women’s swim team is building towards another Canadian Interuniversity Sports (CIS) title after crushing all opponents at the provincial level so far. If they win it will be their fifth title in a row. Meanwhile, the men’s team is in strong contention for a CIS title after winning the provincial championship last year and after a key rival faded out of the championship picture.
“Our past rival, McMaster, has slipped off the radar screen,” said coach Byron MacDonald. “Now it’s Western that we have to worry about. McMaster slipping shows how tough it is to stay on top.”
Coach MacDonald has been coach of the swim team for 27 years. In all this time his swim teams have produced over 100 All-Canadians and have won dozens of national and provincial titles.
This year the women’s team is led by Marcia Byron, a second year student who was named CIS rookie of the year last year. Marco Monaco is a blue-chipper on the men’s side. He was a junior international swimmer for Canada prior to university.
“We lose too many athletes who want to come here to offers from USA and across Canada [due to high academic standards],” commented MacDonald. He pointed out that most other schools are able to draw from a larger talent pool because they do not have the same standards.
He is still very happy about this season, though. He feels that swimmers Marcia Byron and Kate Plyley have brought the team success already and will continue to do so.
On the other side, MacDonald believes that ” few can match the distance group of Paul Dudar, Scott Ling, and Brad Gionet,” who are all members of this year’s powerful men’s team. In addition he sees swimmer Ian McLeod, one of the top butterfliers in the country, being “one of the anchor men” for the gifted squad.
Marcia Byron is clearly the driving force that is propelling the women’s team to victory. She feels that the “drive and commitment of the team this year is unreal.” She and her teammates are excited about the chance to defend their Ontario University Athletics (OUA) and CIS titles in the coming months.
Marcia went on to call the team “very hardworking” and added that “[the team] fuel off one another.”
She also finds success at the OUA championships last year a major feat so far in her career: “This was our big meet that we chose to focus on, and we had great success.”
Byron is also is pleased by the fact that 15 swimmers from the team have already qualified for the CIS championships in February, which is an unusually high number.
Jen Porenta is another key member of the women’s team. She mentioned the team’s growing notoriety: “Just a few weeks ago Sport Canada ranked us first in the nation, and this really motivates us to work hard and push each other in the pool.”
Like Byron, she cited the OUA championships as a major victory for her team: “We really took control from the beginning and had strong swims throughout the meet, which proved our dominance in Ontario.”
Furthermore, Porenta feels that the team is very close this year, and in the long run she and Byron feel that this team will attract other talented swimmers from around the country.
This year’s swim team has already achieved a lot and is hoping that a lot more will be accomplished in 2005. The women’s team is once again on track for a strong title defence at the CIS championship, while the men’s teams are closing in on the title that has eluded them for more than a few years.
