Novice Champs 2010

The Annual Championships forNovice swimmers in the Club were recently held at Totton Leisure Centre. The purpose of this event has 2 main aims. Firstly to give those swimmers who have yet to reach “Club level” or who are still taking lessons, an opportunity tocompete against similar ability swimmers and gaining a taste of what it is like to compete in a swimming event. Secondly, the event is run, timed & judgedby those swimmers who are at “Club level”, giving them some experience & understanding of how similar events they compete in are run, and maybe  giving them an appetite to go on to do courses in the future with a view to becoming a fully qualified ASA Official.

There were 4 age categories forboth boys & girls – U9, 9-10, 11-12 & 13+, and 4 events in each agegroup, Freestyle, Breaststroke, Backstroke and Butterfly, all being of 50mexcept the U9 Butterfly which was only 25m. The top 3 swimmers in each eventall received medals.

Whilst it is not possible to listall those swimmers who took part, the results did produce some note-worthyachievements.

For the girls, Alexandra Walker in the 11-12 years agecategory produced a clean sweep, taking all 4 gold medals.  In the 9-10 age group, Cerys Ralph took gold in Freestyle & Backstroke, with Hannah Brackley taking the Freestyle & Breaststroke in the 13+ group.

In the boy’s section, Harry Cooper equalled Alexandra Walker’s achievement in the U9 age group with another clean sweep. Honours wereeven in the 9-10 group with Freddie Ide claiminggold in the Freestyle & Backstroke, whilst Adam Bowen took Breaststroke & Butterfly. Zayd Neseyif’s domination of the 11-12 boys was only held in checkby Luke Ralph who took the gold forButterfly. To finish off, the boy’s 13+ events were hotly contested between Steven Simpson & Rob Murphy, with Rob emanatingAlexandra & Harry’s feat of taking all 4 gold medals.

The Club Officials would like to thank ALL the swimmers who took part for making the whole event worthwhile. Without you all, we wouldn’thave a club. Thanks must go also to the Club swimmers who did an excellent job in running the event, with a particular mention for Gemma Boyes – Girl’s Vice Captain 2010, for organising the “Officials” for the competition.And on a final note a thank you to all the Qualified Judges,Referees, Time keepers for their supervisory roles during the event .

12th May 2010

 This years Tony Weston Memorial Gala is this coming Saturday evening , please make sure your there on time to cheer the teams on , lets make it a really good night , Also, all the procedes from the raffle will be going to Southampton Eye Unit so please give generously , there are some great prizes this year so dig deep if you can . 

Doors Open 5.30 , Warm up 5.45

Teas and coffees will be available upstairs from 6.30 onwards as well as another desk selling programmes for those wishing to watch from the upper gallery :o) 

I  look forward to seeing you all 

Cheers 

Paul ( FIX IT MAN )