Report by Bill Eversham
On Saturday 31 August 2013 an excited group of Vikings made an early start and headed up to Sydney for the Ryde BPS Meet. This was a big event and there were 193 swimmers on the program. Our intrepid group car pooled up and back with Nicolee Martin, Richard Flockart and Kristen Leydon in one car and Caroline Makin, Marianne Tweedie and Bill Eversham in the other. Jon McRae had also intended to attend but had to withdraw due to a skiing injury.
The car trip up and back was particularly pleasant with lots of discussion about swimming, other people’s driving habits, swimming, more swimming and vagaries of GPS that seemed to use unknown logic in weaving through the back streets of Sydney.
The team arrived at the pool just about on time and it was really humming with excitement and the energy of so many masters swimmers in one place.
The event used all 8 lanes with heats running non-stop from midday until 4pm. The event finished with a great sausage sizzle and relaxed socialising before our team made the trip home to Canberra.
So how did we go? Not bad at all! …
- Marianne blitzed the event with three first places in her age group in 50m Freestyle, 100m Backstroke and 200m freestyle.
- Caroline was equally impressive with three first places in her age group in the same events as Marianne.
- Nicolee also put in a strong showing with a first, second and third in 100m Breaststroke, 200m Freestyle and 50m Freestyle.
- Kristen made firsts in her age group in 100m Individual Medley and 100m Backstroke with a good 50m Butterfly.
- Richard put in strong swims to get second in his age group for the 50m and 100m Butterfly and also finished well in a large field for the 50m Freestyle.
- Bill participated in his first ever BPS meet and improved his PBs for all events as well as getting a third place in his age group for 100m Breaststroke.
Overall our club did fairly well finishing in 10th place out of 32 on the overall club point score and in 8th place for average points per swimmer.
Bill also had the opportunity to complete his Chief Timekeeper training and took this role for for the first two events – 200m Freestyle and 50m Butterfly. He did notice the difference in intensity and business of such a big meet compared to our ACT Interclub meets, but walked away ready and eager for the next opportunity which might be the NSW Short Course Championships in Canberra in October.
While our swimmers did very well and they can be proud of their results, much of the fun of the event was just being there in such a large group of swimmers, competing regardless of outcome and in socialising and building our friendships. The spread of times over the 200m Freestyle event was 2:04 to 8:27. The 8:27 was swum by Jack Matheson at the age of 96 – there was such a great cheer when he finished and that sums up what masters swimming is all about!
Full results are available.
