Sangster goes out with a splash
Truro swimmer hauls in seven medals at AUS championships
Truro native Dean Sangster didn’t leave anything to chance in possibly his final Atlantic University Sport swimming championships.
Graduating this spring from the Acadia Axemen, the 22-year-old Sangster dipped into the AUS conference meet at St. John’s, N.L., in style.
He returned to the Wolfville campus with seven medals, including four in individual races. His five gold medals included three as part of Acadia’s champion relay teams.
“Things have gone quite well,” said the towering Sangster, six-foot-six and 200 pounds. “Coach Kris Bell is awesome. I love our coach. He’s a super nice guy and very smart with anything swimming related.”
It was that kind of a season for Sangster, who qualified for the U Sports national championships at Victoria, B.C., where he also attended the 2020 nationals as a freshman.
The former Truro Centurions standout was named Acadia’s male athlete of the year at the school’s 2022 athletic awards banquet.
This season, Sangster and his Acadia teammates cut short their Christmas holiday break and returned to campus for a mini-camp that propelled them into a productive second half.
“We had a training camp for 10 days in Wolfville,” he said. “It was a lot of good work, and we had a lot of the team here, so it was a good time.
“We were just practising, so we upped our schedule. It was a good way to get our aerobic capacity back up.”
During that camp, the Acadia swimmers completed a New Year’s Eve classic set of extra workouts.
“We did a 14K set, which was a grind,” Sangster said. “Four hours in the pool.
“A local place in New Minas, BarBurrito, supported us. A lot of the team likes big, heavy burritos after practice. They had burritos there for each one of the swimmers at the camp. Everybody appreciated it. We were out of breath because we were trying to eat so fast, because we were so hungry. And we had snacks on the side of the pool while we were swimming.”
As an Acadia athlete of the week, Sangster still managed to fit in the occasional McDonald’s meal during the season.
“Oh yeah, of course,” he said with a chuckle. “Whoever wins the athlete of the week gets one free Big Mac for every month of the year. It’s a nice treat.”
Those honours reflected an award-winning season for Sangster and Acadia, including a solid start in the flagship Kemp-Fry meet last November.
Sangster had picked up where he left off last season, after which he was named Acadia’s male athlete of the year.
“Honestly, I was pretty shocked,” he said. “We had two other really good swimmers that I thought deserved it equally or more than I did. There were also some football players that I thought could have gotten it. I was lucky enough to get it. I just felt so honoured to be recognized amongst so many great athletes here at Acadia.”
As his results would indicate, Sangster had another solid season in the pool.
“This year, I focused more on backstroke again, back to my roots,” he said. “Last year, or the year before, I tweaked my shoulder a little bit, so I strayed away from backstroke and did a bit more freestyle last year.
“But I wanted to get back into backstroke and see what I could do there, and I was right on top of my best times, which was pretty good.”
He said Acadia captain Gordon Shortt “had some pretty incredible swims” at the AUS championships, capping his banner season.
“He’s been phenomenal this year,” Sangster said of the graduating Shortt. “He’s definitely one of the hardest trainers on the team. Just one of those guys that can put his head down and do anything.”
Acadia’s men’s team ran a close second to the Dalhousie Tigers in the decisive meet.
“Dal has a great team and we did all we could,” Sangster said. “It was very close. A lot of tight races.
“Our relay teams were able to take the gold in each one, so that was pretty exciting for us. We hadn’t won the 4x200 freestyle at all this year and we were able to secure the gold on the Saturday of the AUS meet. And we set a new team record, so that was awesome.”
In his first trip to Newfoundland, Sangster was part of three winning relay teams on the conference championship weekend.
Individually, he captured gold in the 100 backstroke and 200 back and earned silver medals in the 50 free and the 50 back.
In some of those same races, Pictou County’s Aaron Day also posted medal results as part of an Acadia team that kept pace with the best of the best in the AUS.
One of those elite swimmers was Dal’s Noah Mascoll-Gomes, who won the 50 free.
“He’s an incredible competitor,” Sangster said. “A very respectful guy, too, which I really like. Just a super nice guy all-around.”
Such camaraderie is part of what makes collegiate swimming special for Sangster.
“We spend so much time together, we’re practically a family,” he said of the Acadia contingent.
That familial atmosphere is much of what Sangster will miss as he departs Acadia with a business degree.
He still has two years of eligibility remaining and hasn’t ruled out coming back for more university swimming as a post-graduate student.
For now, “I want to take a year off and go do some other things,” Sangster said. “Travel and working a little bit are what I’m thinking I want to do.”