Team Alberta Special Olympic swimmers training for national event

Alberta swim team members in training for the 2026 Special Olympics Canada Summer Games

There are 15 swimmers on Team Alberta heading to =nationals that are being hosted in Medicine Hat in August, including five from Calgary who are spending a lot of time in the pool training for the big event.

Joan Gunn, Team Alberta’s Special Olympics national team coach, has been working with most of the five athletes for seven years to improve their technique in the water.

“Besides just swimming up and down a swimming pool, the stroke is very important but the turn can make or break your race,” she said. “It can win or lose a race for you. (It’s the) same with the start, (and the) same with your push off so we try to work everything -- not just stroke, not just swimming fast, (but) everything and bring it all together.”

Gunn says she also works with the athletes on their diet and their dryland training to improve their swimming and make them faster in the pool. A training camp was hosted in Edmonton in mid-June with the entire team for all ten sports along with coaches. Gunn enjoys working with the team.

“They’re very much athletes,” she said. “They are such a joy to work with, it’s wonderful, it’s been an awesome experience, I was appointed last year - last October -- and it’s been non-stop since.”

The Team Alberta Special Olympic swim team is made up of nine women and six men this year from all over province. The Calgary swimmers are Amanda Schleppe, Casey Kruse, Johanna Dias, Jordan Macleod and Morgan Gehring.

Second trip

This is the second trip to nationals for Johanna Dias, 38 years old who first made her way into the pool when she was just a year old and now here specialty is the breast stroke and she’s practicing turns in this session.

“I’m a big fan of nationals because I went there in 2018 for my first one, but this is my second year,” she said. “If you get more power in your legs, you push off the wall -- you go very fast.”

Amanda Schleppe, 35, is attending her third nationals and enjoys meeting athletes from all across the country at the event. She says freestyle and the breast stoke are her best events and she has a method to ease the pressure during the competition.

“People are really competitive so it is like a complete competition,” she said. “You have to focus on knowing where you are (in the pool) and my thing is I pretend no one’s in the water with me, I just go for it like I’m training by myself.”

Casey Kruse, 25, has been swimming for eight years with the Special Olympic team and is heading to nationals for the first time with Coach Gunn.

“She’s been my coach throughout my whole Special Olympic career,” said Kruse. “I have just a great bond with her and I love the determination that she has for each individual and she looks out for everyone’s best interest.”

Kruse has taken on somewhat of a leadership role with the Calgary athletes to make sure they’re at their best.

“You just kind of have to have a positive attitude and understand everyone’s different, diverse needs,” she said. “I’m on a higher functioning level so I kind of want to make sure that I’m looking out for the people that are either nervous or scared or just don’t understand things and just help them understand in different ways.”

The 2026 Special Olympics Canada Summer Games will be held in Medicine Hat, Alberta August 11th to the 15th, 2026 with more than 1,400 athletes, coaches and mission staff, supported by over 1,000 volunteers.

They’ll be competing in athletics, basketball, bocce, golf, powerlifting, rhythmic gymnastics, soccer, softball, swimming and ten pin bowling.

All the athletes are vying for a chance to represent Team Canada at the 2027 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Santiago, Chile.