Welland, ON – After the unfortunate cancellation of the Forest City Invitational Aspire Meet, which was scheduled to take place on December 11th – 13th, Dive Ontario, in coordination with member clubs, judges, and volunteers were able to host the first ever Dive Ontario Virtual Dive Competition.
The 2020 Dive Ontario Virtual Competition offered a great opportunity for our athletes to participate in a competition and allowed them to put all of their hard work to use. A major goal for Dive Ontario during these hard times is to continue to provide opportunities for our athletes to remain engaged with diving, and the virtual meet was a great way to accomplish this. Unfortunately, with lockdowns in certain areas of Ontario and the impact of the pandemic overall, some member clubs were not able to participate. However, even under these difficult circumstances, Dive Ontario was able to receive over 500 video submissions for this event, showcasing the dedication of our divers.
The clubs that participated in this virtual event were able to film their athletes performing their dives and submit them to Dive Ontario to be judged. This past weekend a panel of judges and volunteer scorers connected through Zoom to watch the videos of the submitted dives and judge the events.
Throughout the next several days, Dive Ontario will be highlighting the winners and some of their dives from the competition on social media. We will also be acknowledging the athletes who were competing for the first time and other milestone dives. All final results from the competition can be seen in the attachment below.
The following statement is from Anna Dacyshyn, VP of Sport Performance, “On behalf of the Sport Performance Committee, I wanted to give my thanks to all of the athletes and coaches who participated in the competition. I also wanted to say thank you to all of the judges, volunteers, and Dive Ontario members who devoted a lot of their time to make this event possible.”
Dive Ontario would like to thank the members of the Sport Performance Committee for all the work they did in preparing and executing this competition. Dive Ontario would also like to give a special thank you to Luda Zakharenko, for tirelessly reviewing the dive sheets before and after the event.
With the success of this event and the uncertainty around the upcoming season, virtual competitions may be a great way to keep our divers engaged in competition for 2021. In the meantime, we look forward to all divers getting back in the pool, and are continuing to prepare for the Spring Provincial to be held in March, 2021.
For results from the 2020 Virtual Competition, please click here.
-30-
