Colleen Chiki Burlington Masters Athlete of the Year

I attended the Burlington Sports Alliance dinner last night which honoured, for one, my friend Colleen Chiki as Masters Athlete of the Year!!  Congratulation Colleen!  I don't know if she heard me yell "Chiki, Chiki, Chiki" while she was on stage... but that's my little call for her (thanks to Sean for giving her a cool last name) when she is on the blocks about to swim too.

Colleen and I swim together at Burlington Masters Swim Club (BMSC) and she is a super hard worker; she is always in the top lane pushing the boys (and often kicking their butts).  Colleens is like a good wine and keeps getting better with age (Her times at Nationals this year were Masters Personal Bests!).  Some of her accomplishments while with BMSC include:

Colleen and BMSC
coach Dave Judd

• In 2011, she broke the Ontario Age Group Record in 200y Fly (the previous record was set in 1992 when Chiki was 19)
• She already holds the 100y Fly record
• At 2011 Provincial Championships she swam to 3 gold medals and 3 silver medals. This involved competing in both the 800m Freestyle and 200m Fly events (2 of the toughest events) on the final day of the competition.
• In 2010, Colleen was also a member of a World Record setting relay team 4x100m long course (LC) Free.
• She has also been a part of National Record setting relay teams in the 4x200m relays in both short course and long course.
• Her 2010 National Results of 5 gold medals, 1 silver medal, and 1 bronze medal were key to BMSC earning the Small Team Championship pennant.



Colleen and some BMSC team-mates



Not only is she an excellent swimmer:  Out of the water, Colleen likes to organize fun "cross-training" days.  She finds great adventures for us that has us hanging upside down, swinging on trapeze and walking in treetops, also earning us bruises of honour...

The cool thing about swimming with Colleen now for me is that I also swam with Colleen in university.  In fact we were room-mates.  She managed to get me to more university practices then I'm sure I would have without her.  And we still managed to have a riot (although we also had a very messy place -> we are a little better now)  Just on the weekend, with my daughter Cadence, we were looking at her name on the Brock athlete wall of fame, as Colleen earned a spot there by winning the Athlete Directors award her last year of university after qualifying for CIAU's in her highest number of events that year!  She was an Ontario finalist ever year in university and won the Joe Kerkohven award (swimmer of year) twice.

Colleen and I share a common joy of swimming but we share a great friendship and lots of fun memories and more to come!

I love cheering "Chiki Chiki Chiki"  Keep up the awesome work (and keep those boys in lane 4 in line!)

xoxo Melanie Price