Counties Age Group Champs 2015

What a wonderful weekend of swimming.

Firstly a huge thank you to everyone who helped with the BBQ, timekeeping and IOTing. It was a massive team effort. A particularly big thank you to Jackie Nelson, Julie Kaio, Karen McConnell and Philippa O’Mara who organised the BBQ and manned the stall the entire day. I know you were all exhausted and sick of the sight of sausages but it was worth the effort, we’ve raised a lot of money for the club. We’ll let you know the final amount once Philippa’s added it all up.

A special mention to Blake’s son and his son’s girlfriend, Cameron and Holly who did an outstanding job on the barbecue, helping out all day.

Also, thank you so much to Ria and Niki. As always, they are poolside supporting the children (and the parents) giving them wonderful encouragement, regardless of their swim.

On to the swimming.

It was a weekend of tears, triumphs, disappointments, rain and sun. The weather was against us and by Sunday the children, coaches, parents and supporters were exhausted. Nevertheless the club achieved an impressive 38% pb rate. Every swimmer achieved at least one personal best. The following swimmers had a 50% or greater pb rate for the weekend:

Leon, Cassidy, Maddie, Alexander, Alissa, Matthew and Brandon.

Well done to Leon who qualified as a level 2 swimmer for his 100m backstroke.

Medals

Overall the club achieved 24 gold medals, 31 silver medals and 18 bronze medals, an amazing achievement for our small team.  Every swimmer achieved at least 1 top 10 finish in an individual event, well done to you all!  The club medal table is in the link below.

Medal Tally.xlsx

Relays

Our wonderful relay teams achieved 5 silvers and 1 bronze on Friday night, beaten only by some very strong HPK teams and just missing silver in the girls 11/12 year olds freestyle relay.

Our teams were:

10 and under girls – Mikaela, Katie-Lee, Lily and Elizabeth – 2 silvers

11/12 year old girls – Erin, Emma, Molly, Anna and Krystal – 1 bronze, 1 silver

11/12 year old boys – Blake, Nathan, Matthew, Brandon and Alexander – 2 silvers 

NZ Juniors

The long and often heartbreaking slog to qualify for NZ Juniors is now over. Our swimmers have done themselves proud.

A special congratulations to Alexander who qualified for the 200m breast stroke at the weekend. Well done also to Brandon who added 3 more swims – 400m free, 400m IM and 200m IM.

We have a team of 10 going to Wellington in 3 weeks time:

Elizabeth, Lily, Emma, Erin, Ethan, Nathan, Matthew, Blake, Alexander and Brandon.

Between them they have an amazing 44 swims. This compares to 1 swimmer and 1 swim in 2013, and 6 swimmers and 23 swims in 2014.

Well done team, we will all be supporting you.

We also need to congratulate Mikaela, Shontelle, Anna and Leon who came within 5% of qualifying and in addition Katie-Lee, Alissa, Maddie, Molly and Krystal who were within 10% of a qualifying time. All of you should be proud of your swimming.

Division II

One last congratulations to Erin who added the 200IM to her qualified swims for Division II in March.

Congratulations once again to everyone.