PHOTO COURTESY OF ROCHELLE BIFFART
Rowynn Biffart stands in front of the sponsor board at the 2022 Canadian Junior Swimming Championships in Montreal last week.
jtubb@medicinehatnews.com@ReporterTubb
Swimming at a national level was better than Rowynn Biffart ever expected. It’s also a level she can’t wait to compete at again.
The 13-year-old Hatter competed at the 2022 Canadian Junior Swimming Championships in both the 100-metre and 200-metre breaststroke events last week in Montreal.
“I had never been there before, so it was even cooler,” Biffart said. “It was lots of fun and it was such a cool pool as well.”
Biffart competed in the 100m and 200m breaststroke races and although she didn’t win she placed high among the country’s best.
She finished third in the 100m breaststroke preliminary and took third in the final. In the 200m breaststroke she also finished third in the preliminary race and was 10th in the finals. She was the only 13-year-old in the 200m A-finals.
Biffart also raced a time trial on her 200m individual medley swim and won her heat, giving her a personal best time and a Canadian Junior championship qualifying time at the 14-year-old level. She also has her 14-year-old time in the 200m breaststroke.
The IM swim involves four swimming strokes for a distance of 50 metres each – butterfly, backstroke, breaststroke then freestyle.
Biffart said she had a great time racing ad learned a lot from the experience.
“I just realized that because I was so excited and I was nervous, I just wanted to swim and race, I ended up taking, like, too many strokes, and not getting to full extension,” Biffart said. “That kind of messed it up just a little bit and now I know that I need to be a little bit lower and stay a little bit longer.”
The 2023 Canadian Junior Championship is to be hosted in Edmonton, a much closer venue that she would like to compete at. Aiding the Biffarts in their trip to Montreal was a GoFundMe page started by a fellow swim family which reached $3,437 and received a $1,000 donation from Biffart’s hero, Canadian Olympic swimmer Penny Oleksiak.
She said she was grateful for everyone who supported her financially or reached out throughout he championships.
“It meant so much for people to be supporting me and watching my events and everything, it just makes me so happy,” Biffart said. “I know people are supportive, but then I just realized how much Medicine Hat is also super, super supportive as well.”
Biffart did not have a chance to meet Oleksiak in Montreal where the Olympian was competing at the 2022 Canadian senior championships in the same venue. She did get a chance to meet Olympic breast stroke swimmer Keira Smith and Olympic back stroke swimmer Ingrd Wilm. Biffart said she had a great interaction with Wilm.
“Keira Smith, she’s super sweet and I actually got her autograph, so that was really cool,” Biffart said. “It was my first time in a ready room, which is a little room where all the swimmers go and then they walk you out for the finals, and I had never been in one of those before. So I was asking Ingrid, what do we do, because obviously that wasn’t her first rodeo. It was really cool to talk to her.”
Last Sunday on their way back from Montreal, Biffart competed at the Swim Alberta provincials and won second in the 200m IM, winning a provincial silver medal.
With the swim season winding down until the fall, she said she will work on getting faster and stronger while also enjoying some time outside trailer camping with her family. While reflecting on the week, Biffart said it felt so good to swim on the national stage.
“Once I was done my last race, it was just like, ‘oh my gosh, that’s my last race here,’ and it just felt so good to be able to go there and swim,” Biffart said. “Then to know that so many people were supporting me as well and I got two new best times, that was really cool as well.”
