Brantford Swimming Club (BAC) enjoyed tremendous successes from its swimmers over the course of the 2024-25 season.
Joni Maerten-Sanders, who came over from the Wilmot Aquatic Club out of New Hamburg, Ontario, to become one of the coaches for the BAC last season, described her first year with the club.
“Coming to Brantford was a whole new experience for me, because I was a head coach for 23 years…and now I was working under Paul Armstrong and the BAC coaching team. [This past season] was a lot of fun and I really enjoyed getting to coach in a different facility and working with a strong coaching staff. In the past, I had worked with top level swimmers…preparing a few Olympians as well as a lot of national qualifiers. But, this last year, we had seven, which was a kind of breakthrough year,” the veteran coached said. “I had 16 to 20 kids that I worked with at Wilmot [and] now the team and I at BAC were working with 40 to 50 senior swimmers, which are 13 and over. It was great working with these groups of swimmers that are really dedicated and motivated. It’s a lot of fun, because they want to be there and want to swim while working hard to get better.”
However, the BAC already started off on the fast lane, achieving various successes early in the season.
“We started the season off with our biggest meet of the short course season, which goes to January [and] it was our own home meet in December. And we also had swimmers at the Junior international meet that weekend. Atthe Ontario Junior International event, we had a 17-year-old Noah Terejko who won the 100 breaststroke, which was pretty impressive, because he was up against swimmers from all over Canada [and] around the world,” she reflected “And then at that home meet…it helped set up some of our top end swimmers to develop and getting them ready for our long course season. We [also] had a lot of kids that were new to swimming and they quickly… [in fact] we had ten, 11, and 12-year-olds that were breaking club records [which were] held by former Olympians…which was pretty amazing.”
For the summer portion, the BAC kicked it into high gear, as the major meets were held during the summer.
“We traveled to Winnipeg and had swimmers at the nationals for the first time. Mason Steedmanhad a lot of breakthrough swims there [and we had other] swimmers that were getting really close to national trial times. Gwen Coubrough started to work on some distance swimming, partway through the season…and has been showing that she’s pretty good at it. Brynn Scheffelhad a really good meet there as well, just missing her national cut for the 1500 free style and we’re looking forward to getting it this year,” Maerten-Sanders recalled. “Our alumni swimmers went to the short course national championships, where Hunter Payne swam the 10K open water race that was the bronze medalist at that meet, Noah picked up medals in the 50M and 200 breaststroke and coming in fourth in the 100M breaststroke….and then Carter Scheffel, who is one of our alumni as well, medaled in the 400 individual medley. So overall, Branford had a really successful summer,” Maerten-Sanders said. “And we had Jeff Vincent, who competed in the open water for the first time as a master swimmer. He had never competed in open water before [and went to capture] the silver in the 1K. And then Emma-Jane Fowler, who is an alumni, won a silver in the 3K open water.”
After strong a season for BAC, Maerten-Sanders is looking to continue its success, albeit with some major coaching changes.
“I’m so looking forward to this upcoming season [and] to continue developing what we had going on last year…but there are going to be some changes. Paul Armstrong, who was the head coach, has left the club and so has Chris Sanders, who has taken a job with McMaster University as an assistant coach there. Our coaching team this year is me, Mike Livings, and Megan Donnelly…we will be doing the lead coaching. Mike and myself will be doing the senior swimmers, which are the 13 and overs, and Megan’s taking lead on the 12 and under programming. It’s a pretty exciting opportunity because it doesn’t put all the emphasis on one head coach to do everything. It gives us a chance to work together, [utilizing] each of our best traits and coaching abilities.”
However, Maerten-Sanders discussed the goals for the swimming club going forward.
“We want to keep building the team. I see us growing to over 300 swimmers. Right now, we have around 175. We also want to continue to develop our top-end swimmers and have more kids make the national trials cut, which will happen in July [2026] … [and a] selection for events like the Commonwealth Games and Pacific Games. Hopefully, some of the kids will get opportunities to make it to the junior teams, as we continue to help them develop into [competitive swimmers],” she explained.
