The Stettler Tsunamis swim club is making waves in the provincial swimming world.
When Jarek Bursik took over as swim club head coach in 2019, it was a shadow of its former self with just 19 swimmers.
In the intervening years under his leadership the club membership has grown to 50 swimmers, the maximum possible under current limitations, and spawned a top-three provincial swimmer and another that has qualified for the provincial championships.
During a swim meet in January 2025, 10-year-old Ryder Martin ended up swimming in the 100-metre freestyle, earning a time that placed him third in the province for his age group.
"He's a fast one, that's for sure," said teammate David Bursik.
David is not slow himself, in January he met the Provincial Trials Time Standards, which means he qualified for the provincial championships.
"He needs to swim this time to even go to provincials," said head coach, and dad, Jarek.
There is an added twist in David's story; due to vision issues, David competes as a para-swimmer; however, the time he captured in the Provincial Trials was under the normal standards.
According to Jarek, under para-standards, David is on the cusp of breaking provincial records.
What makes all of this even more special for Jarek, the team, and the community is the competition; whereas Stettler can put 50 swimmers of varying levels in the water, at swim meets they are able to compete head-to-head with swimmers from major urban centres such as Calgary and Edmonton.
Jarek explained that in Calgary, there are "five or six" swim clubs with around 400 swimmers each.
Because of their swimming ability, both David and Ryder were invited to a "Future Stars" swim camp in Edson in November 2024 under the tutelage of Olympian Finlay Knox.
"It was awesome," said Ryder.
According to Jarek, despite it still being a few years off, coaches from the University of Alberta have already started scouting David and invited him to a development camp.
Jarek says that his goals for David are for him to make a university swim team, and make it to Nationals.
Meanwhile, David is dreaming... bigger.
His current goal is to compete in the Los Angeles Paralympics in 2028.
"I think I got it," said David.
To that end, David is training with the swim team four days a week and doing dryland gym training five days a week.
The Tsunamis swim season is long but broken up into two. The regular swim season runs from September until provincials in March, then an extended season runs from April until June.
On average, team members attend one swim meet a month and around 12 per season if all are attended.
Due to space constraints, the Stettler Tsunamis is capped at 50 swimmers due to a shortage of lane space. Jarek says that the only way to add swimmers to the team would be to get extra swim time from the pool, which becomes cost and time-prohibitive for himself and the four other coaching staff.
