Central’s Swim Club hosted its first Inland Northwest Region Championship swim meet on April 2, which was a record-setting fundraising event for the swimmers.

The club raised close to $3,500 at the event and profited nearly $2,500, which is at least twice as much as the club is normally raises in a year, according to senior Jaegger Olden, club member and event coordinator.

According to Olden, previously the club held more generic fundraisers in the past, but now the club will focus more on raising money through swimming events.

“I think it’s gonna be a dramatic change,” Olden said. “It’s gonna be probably the main fundraiser for every year.”

In order to run these meets, the club needed to download the Meet Manager computer system, which gives the club the room and speed to store and record all the data at the event to report to U.S. Masters Swimming (USMS).

Last year Olden spearheaded the idea of hosting swim meets.

“Meets are kind of my thing that I developed for the club in order to help with fundraising,” Olden said. “Otherwise we’d be doing boring stuff like yard sales… This way it’s more focused on swimming than other [events].”

The money raised will help fund the club’s trip to the USMS National Championship meet April 28 through May 1 in Greensboro, North Carolina.

Swimming clubs from across the nation participate at the championship meet, and not all have affiliations with universities. Some clubs are even comprised of Olympic caliber competitors.

The Central Swim Club plans on sending 12 members to the meet.

“It’s great for us to actually get this opportunity to go to nationals and bring as many people as we’re bringing,” said freshman Connor Ridgeway.

It will cost the team $9,300 to travel to nationals this year; $5,000 of that was received from club sports funding and the other $4,300 was produced by individual swimmer fees, profits from the championship meet and contributions from the team’s account.

This is only Central’s second year hosting USMS swim meets, and the events are becoming easier for the club to run, according to senior Sarah Olden, club president.

Sarah and Jaegger Olden received recognition for the success of the event from the Inland Northwest Region board, which will go far for the club’s chances of hosting other big events and more championship meets moving forward.

It wasn’t just Sarah and Jaegger Olden behind the scenes of the event. Many different Swim-Club members and a few members of Central’s other club sports volunteered time supporting the event.

Overall, it was a learning experience for many of the younger club members.

“It was something I haven’t done,” Ridgeway said. “I’ve never actually ran a swim meet, so it’s good for me to see how it’s actually ran… It’s good to be on the other end.”

The club hopes to duplicate the success swimming had as a varsity sport at Central in the 1980s when they head to North Carolina. Central took home five-NAIA national titles in men’s and women’s swimming between 1984 and 1987.

Jaegger Olden said that next year there will be Central swimming alumni at the club’s big meet, including many from the 1984 team who were inducted into Central’s athletic Hall of Fame in 2014.