All ten years of age or younger, an octet of Sudbury girls will soon celebrate a pool party of a different kind.

It’s a wonderful development in the eyes of Sudbury Artistic Swim Club (SASC) head coach Courtney Stasiuk-Mohr, a program alumnus and graduate of Marymount Academy.

“The most exciting part for me is seeing just how excited these kids are coming to the pool,” said Stasiuk-Mohr, the woman who oversees a myriad of club coaches, including Emily Binks, her cohort who guides the 10 & under team of provincial competitors.

“Watching them in their groups with their coaches, watching their progress from the beginning of the year to now, seeing their routine continue to grow, has been amazing. That’s the part I love the most.”

The 2024-2025 season marks the first time since the arrival of Covid-19 in March of 2020 that the SASC has entered a 10 & under team in this level of meets, the group preparing for their first competition of the season later this week in Markham, part of a large field on hand for the Leslie Taylor Ontario Cup.

Despite making due with the limitations of the R.G. Dow Pool in Copper Cliff – at least limitations compared to what has been the traditional home of what was synchronized swimming, until just recently, at Laurentian University – the Sudbury Artistic group now number 60 swimmers strong, including a handful of masters (18+) in the pool.

And for as much as the veteran club duo of Heidi Fink and Eva Jessup continue to shine and lead the charge, it is this next wave of swimmers that hold hope for the future of artistic swimming with the only club that exists in Northern Ontario.

“We saw the potential in these swimmers and decided to try more challenging things,” noted Stasiuk-Mohr. “They have progressed to the little bit more advanced moves that we would find in the competitive stream. This will be their first time doing a routine that contains elements at this level.”

That said, these kids are largely a group of eight and nine year olds.

For as much as there is excitement and anticipation to showcase the skills they have learned, they are at least as equally thrilled to chat about the “competition ensemble” they will unveil at the Markham Pan Am Centre in just a few days.

“We have bathing suits that are pink with lots of gems on it – and on the butt, we have a party bus,” explained Evelyn D’Onofrio-Jones with a giggle.

Did I just hear that right?

“We have a lot of sequins and gems on the bathing suit – and a school bus on it – on our butts,” reiterated teammate Violet Timony some ten minutes later, not privy to the earlier conversation.

All for good reason.

The team will be competing to the tune of “We Like to Party” by the Vengaboys – with the Vengabus front and centre in their video, but also with the collection of sounds that intro the hit song.

Make-up and gelled hair will be in order for the first time for this youthful collection of swimmers, save a brief training session at the local pool to introduce parents to the finer details of gelling the hair of their little starlets.

After all, the kids have worked hard to get to this point.

A grade three student at Northeastern Public School, D’Onofrio-Jones is in her second year with the team, a natural when it comes to being in the water it would seem. “I actually just taught myself how to swim – I have a pool at home,” she stated.

Artistic swimming, however, is something of a different animal.

“It was pretty good (when I first started). The pool was a little long and I thought: this is going to be very hard,” she said.

“My friend told me about it and it sounded like fun because I did swimming lessons for a few years,” Violet Timony recalled later. “When I first went underwater and started the learning of sculling, learning the moves, I was thinking: this isn’t really close to swimming lessons – but it is really fun.”

A grade four student at Walden Public School, Timony was with a different club grouping than D’Onofrio-Jones last year, though the two have now teamed up with six fellow swimmers to learn all that is needed to give competitive artistic a shot.

“We learned to do the barracuda, the front pike pull-down and the splits,” said Timony. “Emily (coach Binks) pushes us hard and we work really hard for her. We have to work hard when we go underwater because our legs have to be up really high and we don’t want them to sink.”

The team is also getting used to the reality of an eight-swimmer team, with many having come from much smaller groupings one year ago.

“We’re all kind of squished together and there’s not always a lot of room to do a “side flutter”,” added D’Onofrio-Jones. “The coaches taught us the routine first (on pool deck), telling us what spot to go in and then somehow, we just do it in the water.”

It would be difficult for Coutney Stasiuk-Mohr not to share the excitement of the club up and comers. “I draw on that and try and foster that connection so that they feel that inclusion and continue to come back,” she said.

“We want them to feel that sense of community, that we are a family here. Because our club has always been so small, we’ve always had that sense of family.”

Now, it’s time for the family to host a “party in the pool” – apparently, with the precocious kids leading the way.

Rounding out the 10 and under SASC roster are Gabby Boudreau, Aarefa Bootwala, Olivia Beauvais, Brielle Thornton, Ella Aho and Mackenna Laban.

Sudbury Artistic is also competing two other teams that are taking part in the Regional circuit, travelling to Ottawa to face squads from the Eastern region of Ontario. Those teams feature:

13 to 15 years old: Leah Fosten, Bella Perron, Sophie Patry, Brielle Fudge, Hanna Edwards, Violet Shelswell and coach Amy Lacelle

16 to 20 years old: Ava Pagnutti, Maya Benoit, Brianne Portelance, Emily Roy and coach Gillian Franklin