Whitehorse's Joshua Kelly knows how to end on a high note.

The 17-year-old Glacier Bear, who has been with the swim club 13 of those years, opted to walk away from competitive swimming after breaking three club records in one day at the 2011 Western Canada Summer Games in Kamloops, B.C., last week.

Kelly achieved a national time standard in the process.

"After 13 years of swimming, I'm going to stop. I really wanted to finish (my career) with high achievements. I did what I wanted to do. My goal was to achieve the national time, and that's what I did.

"I really do enjoy swimming, just not competitively anymore.”

Kelly broke his first Glacier Bears club record in the 100-metre breaststroke on Saturday, the final day of the Western Games.

In the preliminaries, he broke the old record of one minute, 11.82 seconds with a time of 1:11.14.

But Kelly wasn't done there.

In the finals later the same day, he beat his own time with a staggering 1:09.53. His split time of 32.47 at the 50-metre mark of that race was also fast enough to break the club record in the 50 breast. Brice Harding held the old record of 32.88 since 2008.

Like many of the Team Yukon swimmers at the Western Games, Kelly's goal was simply to achieve personal best times, which he did in three of the six events he competed in.

"I wasn't expecting personal bests in everything, and I was also really wanting to finish on a high note, I really wanted to finish off my swimming career with a bang,” Kelly said.

"I've been training quite a bit this summer … and I'm really proud of the effort I put in during the swim meet.”

Kelly ends his competitive career with some experience, having competed in the 2009 Canada Summer Games in P.E.I., the 2008 North American Indigenous Games in B.C. and the 2007 Western Canada Summer Games in Strathcona County, Alta.

Glacier Bears head coach Stephanie Dixon said Kelly acted as a role model for young swimmers within the club.

"Josh has some incredible talent, and it is such a pleasure to watch him swim,” said Dixon, who recently took over as head coach of the Glacier Bears. "He makes it look so effortless, and he's an absolutely beautiful swimmer. In every single one of his races he put fourth 100 per cent effort.

"He really stepped it up at these games and put fourth some real competitive swims. He was right up there with the rest of the provinces for the 100-metre breaststroke, which was huge. I feel he really held his own and made the Yukon proud.”

Kelly said that throughout his career he strived to push young swimmers to beat his times.

"Whenever I would swim with younger swimmers, I always pushed them to beat my records, because it's always nice to see your time finally get beaten.

"That just means that the next generation is getting faster; and so, I always tried to push people to beat my times.”

The Western Games was the perfect venue to end his competitive swimming career, he added.

"It was a great experience.”