Swimming is the key that has unlocked the pathway for a Holy Rosary High School student to make his way to Brock University in the Fall.
Landon Daschuk is saying farewell to the Border City as he wades from the local swimming pool into currents that will see him entering the medical field.
“My mom has been in healthcare. I’ve seen her runaround doing tons of things with COVID now and all kinds of different stories in the medicine field. It just really pushed me to want to pursue medicine and be able to help others.”
Daschuk will be taking Medical Sciences at Brock University and using it as his springboard to medicine. He might specialize as an anesthesiologist eventually.
Daschuk started swimming with the Rebels when he was 11 years-old. He admits he didn’t really like it, but once again his mom may have had something to do with putting him in.
Splash forward to today and Daschuk says he’s at about 25 seconds for his fifty metres freestyle and with the World Record being about 20 seconds, he would have a lot of work to do to shave off those extra five seconds. He notes to get on the Canadian National team he would have to aim at getting to a time of 22 seconds. The good news is that his weekly time trials have been getting better.
Daschuk and the graduating class of 2021 have faced the unique challenges of going to school in the era of COVID.
“Oh yeah, it’s been really hard. I love volleyball. It’s such a great sport and [to be unable to] play that this year was just heartbreaking. I got back into the pool in September, as the pool had opened. I was still able to go swim and then the rules changed again.”
At that point his swimming hours were cut to about half, but he kept up with his training. Overall Daschuk says even though he is not in one of the mainstream sports like hockey, it’s pretty cool to have been able to move on using swimming to get to the next level.
He is thankful for his time at Holy Rosary and the support of his coach. He’s encouraging others to get in the pool.
“I would really love to tell anyone, at any age to pick up swimming. Swimming is such a great sport. It’s such a great workout every time. You can fall in love with it. You can hate it, but at the end of the day you are getting a wonderful workout and you can go pretty great places with it, like Brock University.”