There was a time when medal winning performances at international meets were common occurrence for members of the Sudbury Laurentian Swim Club representatives, paced back in the day by Canadian Olympic hero Alex Baumann.

Those days have long-since passed, which is why one can understand the local excitement surrounding a pair of silver medals that Collège Notre-Dame graduate Nina Kucheran recently secured at the 2018 Jr Pan-Pacific Swim Championships in Fiji.

The Florida State University freshman managed a second place finish in the 100m breaststroke, adding another as a member of the Canadian entry in the 4 X 100 women's medley relay.

Kucheran served notice in the 100m breaststroke preliminaries, seeding second with a time of 1:08.81, touching the wall behind only Emily Weiss of the United States.

The finals would mirror the morning race as Kucheran clocked in at 1:08.37, still about a second back of Weiss, but just barely ahead of teammate Avery Wiseman (1:08.52) of Calgary.

The northern Ontario stalwart in the pool then teamed with Madison Broad (Wallaceburg), Maggie MacNeil (London) and Ainsley McMurray (Cote-St-Luc, PQ), squeezing between the first place Americans and bronze medal winning quartet from Japan, completing the relay in 4:05.21.

Unfortunately, Kucheran could not duplicate the result in the 200m breaststroke, placing fourth in the morning qualifier with a time of 2:29.66, and shaving 11/100ths of a second off but sliding into exactly the same slot (4th) in the final (2:29.55).

Kucheran also competed in the 200m freestyle to open her schedule of events, covering the distance in 2:04.73, good for 22nd place. The local athlete was heading directly to Florida following her first major international meet, preparing for her first season within the NCAA Division I ranks.