There will never be a crumby thing said about the annual Cookie Classic swim meet in Ponoka.
The invitational meet, hosted by the Ponoka Pool Sharks swim club, has been a must-be-at event for clubs from around the province for the past several years featuring some of top swimmers in Alberta.
This year, the meet attracted a total of nine clubs — including from as far afield as Athabasca, Edson and Olds — along with a few closer to home with close to 180 swimmers participating in the two-day weekend meet.
Pool Sharks head swim coach Bobbi-Jo Christensen was really pleased with how successful the entire event was along with how well her own swimmers did.
“It was a fun, fantastic and fast weekend of racing,” she said.
“We had a few swimmers achieve provincial qualifying times and our first-time competitors all swam fantastic, completing all of their events.”
For the Sharks, they had 39 swimmers who walked away with a total of 97 medals from the meet. In addition, 14 Sharks qualified to race in Sunday’s eliminator round, another measure of just how successful the meet was for the club.
However, in such an individual sport, Christensen added there is a real team atmosphere among the Sharks with everyone cheering and supporting their teammates in and out of the pool.
But, it wasn’t just the medals that the swimmers were after — it was also the homemade cookies. And the Sharks proved to be ravenous in the water, with 85 per cent of the swimmer earning at least one cookie during the weekend.
Cookies, that’s the big draw at the meet, with each swimmer who comes out with a new best time in their event receiving a cookie. This year, the flavour was chocolate chip and made by the entire Christensen household which also includes the coach’s parents.
“We always look at how many swimmers are entered and optimistically believe each one will swim a best time, so this year we made more than 90 dozen cookies,” she said.
“We began baking on the Wednesday and didn’t finish until sometime Friday. Every time you walked into the house, it smelled great.”