INUVIK
Julienne Chipesia may be back in the NWT, but she'll carry her experiences at the Western Canada Summer Games in Alberta this summer wherever she goes.

Inuvik swimmer Julienne Chipesia competes at the Western Canada Summer Games in Alberta in August. Although she has just completed a big competition, the athlete says she is ready to keep training for her next meets in Yellowknife, Whitehorse and possibly Grande Prairie. - photo courtesy of Julienne Chipesia

"It was wonderful, I really liked it a lot," she said last week, although she regrets that age limits prevent her from going to the next summer Games.

"I was pretty sad that these would be my first and last games. My favourite thing was racing, and being at the cultural events and being with my team."

Chipesia competed in the 1,500-metre, 400-metre, and 800-metre races and, while she didn't finish on the podium, she did improve her times enough in the 1,500 and 800 to qualify for more high level meets in the future.

"I'm still going to be training, I have some meets coming up - two in Yellowknife, some in Whitehorse, and my coach says we're looking at going to some bigger meets in Kamloops and Grande Prairie."

Vince Brown, Chipesia's coach, said he couldn't be more proud of her effort and hard work for these games.

"As far as sports go, swimming is the hardest to qualify for," he said, explaining that other sports require a certain number of athletes, whereas swimmers qualify solely based on the best time they have completed individual distances.

"She's definitely one of the hardest working swimmers I've ever met."

Brown said Chipesia has taken a whole minute off her 800-metre time in the last year and that, having only really started swimming a few years ago, making it to the games is a massive accomplishment.

"It's all the dedication, the hard work, I'm really proud of her," Brown said.

"She's qualifying in a hard sport and she's excelling at it."

Apart from the training and races, Chipesia said she appreciated the opportunity to hang out with her teammates. As the only swimmer from Inuvik and one of only a few from outside of Yellowknife, she said she doesn't get to spend as much time with them as she would like.

"We went to California for a week in June to train and it was like a bonding experience," Chipesia said.

"I've competed against some of them before, but I never really knew many of them." As for next moves, Chipesia said she wants to work on long-distance swimming and trying out a few different strokes. She said she might even start looking at triathlons.

"It was good, I was able to relax a bit at the games," she said, adding that she

had been to the North American Indigenous Games and the Arctic Winter Games before.

"I still get nervous before my race, I want to do a good time, but it's all really fun."

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