MONTREAL – The McGill Martlets collected five first-place finishes in six events at the season-opening meet, a 10-school competition held  Saturday, under the auspices of the Canadian University Artistic Swimming League, in front of a large and boisterous crowd at Memorial Pool.
 
Anna Dolgova, a 20-year-old biochemistry freshman from Saskatoon, Sask, posted a pair of first-place finishes, winning the experienced solo routine with a score of 88.0542 points. She also was part of McGill's winning team routine, which registered a score of 122.2667 points.
 
Other members of the team routine included Emilie Charette of Oakville, Ont., Kayla Drew of Chilliwack, B.C., Chloe Gavrilovic of Ottawa, Catherine McGee of Toronto, Olivia McLaughlin of Montreal, April Ozere of Halifax, Annemarie Salama-Siroishka of St. Anne de Bellevue, Que., Clara Thomas of Ottawa, and Alexa Vaillancourt of Newton, Mass.
 
In the experienced duet routine, McGee and McLaughlin teamed up for a second-place finish. They tallied 83.3375 points, which was just shy of the first-place pair from Waterloo, which scored 86.0396.
 
"We're thrilled with the results, especially considering that a new judging system was launched internationally by our federation (FINA) last June," said McGill head coach Lindsay Duncan. "It follows the models of figure skating and gymnastics and involves us declaring the difficulty of the routine in advance and then we are judged on how well we are able to execute on the difficulty. There are big consequences in terms of your score, if you fail to execute one of the elements you declared. This the first season that were are training for the new system and it involves much more technical difficulty and requires more physical fitness than in previous years. The athletes are finding it quite challenging, but they are rising to the challenge as can be seen from the results of our meet."

McGill swept all three categories in the novice section with Diana Paparelli, who hails from the town of Biot, in France, playing a prominent role.
 
A sophomore in art history and anthropology, Paparelli won the solo event with a score of 83.9300, about nine points ahead of second-place Ottawa. She also teamed up with Tara Fitzgerald, an Arts freshman from Ottawa, to win the duet event with 80.9300, some 13 points ahead of second place Queen's.
 
Paparelli was also part of the winning team routine, which tallied 87.1317, about six points ahead of the squad from John Abbott College. Others in that team routine included the aforementioned Fitzgerald, plus Montrealer Dali Jedrzejowski-Soccio, Irys Miciak of Hudson, Que., Aya Shaban of Montreal and Sadie Wang of Waterloo, Ont.

McGILL INVITATIONAL ARTISTIC SWIM MEET -- PODIUM RESULTS 
 

	Experienced Solo Routine
1	Anna Dolgova	McGill	88.0542
2	Chloe McAllister	Ottawa	80.9667
3	Noemi Girard	McGill	79.3188
	Novice Solo Routine
1	Diana Paparelli	McGill	83.9300
2	Saari Fauteux-McLellan	Ottawa	74.3233
3	Tara Fitzgerald	McGill	73.5667
	Experienced Duet Routine
1	Hadas Barabash & Sierra Motzek	Waterloo	86.0396
2	Catherine McGee & Olivia McLaughlin	McGill	83.3375
3	Molly Chen & Sydney Denstedt-Barr	Waterloo	81.9188
	Novice Duet Routine
1	Tara Fitzgerald & Diana Paparelli	McGill	80.9300
2	Annabelle Auge & Laurence Soucy	Ottawa	67.4500
3	Sydney Dam & Bridget Marsland	Guelph	57.6533
	Experienced Team Routine
1	Emilie Charette, Ana Dolgova, Kayla Drew, Chloe Gavrilovic,	McGill	122.2667
	Catherine McGee, Olivia McLaughlin, April Ozere,
	Annemarie Salama-Siroishka, Clara Thomas, Alexa Vaillancourt
2	(na)	Queen's	116.6225
3	Lucy Dawson, Madeline Engen, Emma Geoffrey, Noemi Girard,	McGill	115.8521
	Ana Gordon, Peter Matthews-Crochetiere, Sophia Monney,
	Zoe Morinville, Mar Oromi-Llobet, Viola Pitchkour
	Novice Team Routine
1	Tara Fitzgerald, Dali Jedrzejowski-Soccio, Irys Miciak,	McGill	87.1317
	Diana Paparelli, Aya Shaban, Sadie Wang
2	(na)	John Abbott	81.2333
3	(na)	Ottawa	68.4933

SOURCE
Earl Zukerman
Sports Information Officer
Athletics & Recreation
McGill University
514-983-7012 (Tel.)
www.mcgillathletics.ca
earl.zukerman@mcgill.ca