Swimming Canada is proud to announce a talented lineup of former national team swimmers who will present the live webcast of this week’s Team Canada Trials.
A total of 572 athletes from 138 clubs will be in action at Trials with spots on the line for the 2015 national team. The field includes guest competitors from the United States, Puerto Rico, Denmark, Aruba, Bermuda, Ireland, Finland and Sweden.
All eight sessions of the meet will be webcast live at www.swimming.ca from Wednesday to Saturday. Preliminary heats begin at 10 a.m. each day with finals set for 6 p.m. Each night of coverage will begin with a pre-game show at 5:45 p.m. Saturday’s finals will be followed by the live announcement of the national team for the Toronto 2015 Pan Am Games and FINA World Championships.
Anchoring all four nights of commentary is two-time Olympian Julia Wilkinson. The Stratford, Ont., native retired from competitive swimming in 2013 with three Commonwealth Games medals and six Canadian records to her credit. A graduate of Texas A&M University, Wilkinson has since begun making a name for herself in sports journalism, broadcasting, communications and marketing. Her experience includes swimming coverage for FOX Sports and Swimming World magazine, sports marketing for Nike Swim, and her current role as Coordinator, Athlete Engagement and Communications for the Toronto 2015 organizing committee.
Wilkinson will be joined by three co-hosts during the four-day meet. Kicking off the meet Wednesday is former Canadian record holder and two-time Canadian Interuniversity Sport Swimmer of the Year Callum Ng. The University of British Columbia and B.C. Institute of Technology graduate is the senior writer/producer for Olympic.ca and also serves as the radio play-by-play voice of the Ontario Hockey League’s Oshawa Generals.
On Thursday, Andrew Haley returns after serving as co-host for the Can Am Para-swimming Trials earlier this month. The five-time Paralympic medallist has extensive public speaking experience and was recently inducted into Swimming Canada’s Circle of Excellence.
Wrapping things up Friday and Saturday will be 2013 Trials webcast co-host Collin Sood. The former national team member is a graduate of the University of Alberta and Mount Royal College, and brings extensive broadcast experience as an editor and producer at TSN.
Sideline reporter Kaycee Leigh will work alongside each night’s co-hosts. A graduate of Centennial College, her experience includes a variety of independent television and film productions and an internship at Global Television. She was also a social media writer for CTV’s London 2012 Olympic coverage and served as assistant producer on the TVO show Hard Rock Medical.
The webcast is being presented in partnership with Centennial College. Centennial Broadcasting and Film students and graduates are producing the show, while aspiring journalists from the school’s Sports Journalism program are providing extensive coverage before, during and after the meet at torontoobserver.ca. In addition, a student from the Public Relations program will be placed with Swimming Canada on an eight-week internship beginning at the Trials.
In addition to the Pan Am and World Championships teams, Swimming Canada will also select teams for the FINA World Junior Championships and FISU World University Games based on performances at the Trials.
Swiming News is courtesy of Swimming Canada.