2013 Annual Club Awards

Report by Leisa Cass, Club President

The 2013 Club Christmas Party/Presentation Night was held on the evening of Sunday 15 December 2013 at Tuggeranong Vikings Club and the perpetual club awards/trophies were presented by our club President, Leisa Cass.

2013 was another amazing year for us at Tuggeranong Masters Swimming ACT. We have once again swum in numerous rivers and lakes and harbours and oceans, as well as many, many, many swimming pools.

2013 Perpetual Club Awards/Trophies

Gill and David Buckley Encouragement Award 

This award is for a Thursday morning swimmer who trains regularly, takes instruction and applies it to the best of their ability, and just plain tries hard but has fun too. This year’s winner likes a challenge and is already gearing up for next year’s MS Mega Swim. She is a laugh a minute with a sunny disposition and a great addition to the club. Freshly back from Queensland where she took surfboard riding lessons, this year’s winner was Deborah Johns.

Tuggeranong Masters Swimming Encouragement Award 

Tuggeranong AUSSI Masters Most Improved Swimmer

This year, the Most Improved Swimmer award went to a bit of a quiet achiever. He has been swimming with us for a couple of years now, and has steadily worked his way through the starting positions in lane one and moved on into lane two. He regularly comes to training a bit early to do some work on specific drills that address parts of his swimming he feels need a bit of extra work. This year he has really been working hard on his butterfly and this has seen his Butterfly times improve quite a bit. He works hard at training and over the course of the year, his times across the board have really started to come down. This year’s winner was Bill Eversham.

Judy Gallagher Memorial Trophy for Swimmer of the Year

This year’s winner has a liking for competing. Any chance for a race, against a field of contenders or just the clock and she’s there. She currently holds 48 club records, with 37 of them being set this year when she moved into a new age group. In 2013 she has 9 Long Course and 23 Short Course nationally ranked Top Ten swims, and set the NSW State Long Course record for 400m Butterfly in February. She is a great club member and supporter of the club, doing lots of work outside of the pool to help run and promote the club. She is super at organising relay teams too and herding us all into our teams and off to marshalling. This year’s winner was Caroline Makin.

Postal Swimmer of the Year

This year’s winner completed the British Long Distance Swimming Association One Hour Swim, the Wests Auburn 5000m Turtle Swim (in a relay team of two, so completed 2,500m), the Bunbury 3 x 400m Winter Postal Swim, our own Tuggeranong Trifecta, (400m, 800m & 1500m) and the Taskmaster Postal Swim (800m BU, 1500m BK, ½ hour BK, & 1 hour BR). This year’s winner was Ann Reid.

Iron Person of the Year

Around the middle of last year, this swimmer asked “What’s this Endurance swimming that I keep hearing about?”  Our President and Coach, Leisa gave a brief outline, and he thought it sounded like something he should have a go at as he likes a bit of distance work rather than short stuff. So he started coming along on Saturday mornings and decided he liked this Endurance stuff.  this year, he has been a regular attendee on Saturday mornings, always checking his sheet to see how much he had improved his times.  Around  March time, he approached Leisa after training one Sunday night and declared that he’d like to do an 800m IM by the end of the year, and what training did he need to do to get there? They talked through some ideas and he went off to do some extra training. He was steadily working his way through the endurance program when serious illness stuck mid-year. After Leisa’s initial concern for him, her next thought was — well – bugger — there goes his 800m IM by the end of the year. But, he was back in the pool after a couple of months and doing what he could building back up, managing a couple of 400m and 800m swims, and then just a few weeks ago what do we hear about? Alan Duus did his first ever 800m IM! Along with this achievement he has also managed to complete most of the Endurance Program and he is this year’s Iron Person of the Year.

Club Person of the Year

The Club Person of the Year is someone who has been around masters swimming for a while now. Over the years, she has taken on all sorts of roles, on our committee and with the ACT Branch committee when it existed. She has also taken on various official roles around the pool. In the last couple of years, the swimming side of things — or training anyway – has been reduced due to niggling injuries, although when you put her on a starting block and say “go!”, she still has a bit of pace she can turn on. She has dealt, for 16 months, with the pool management and ACT government for a lane hire agreement that meets our needs and although we didn’t quite win our case, along with other pool user groups we certainly got a better deal that they were originally offering us. In October, she was named NSW Volunteer of the Month for being “An inspiration to her club… She is tireless in her work trying to bring both ACT clubs together”. Under her leadership the over the last few years, the club has gone from strength to strength. The committee has come together and is working well and the members are being supported across all levels of swimming. This year’s Club Person of the Year award went to Annette Britten.

External Awards/Qualifications presented to our Club/Members during 2013

In mid-2013 the club was presented with the 2012 NSW Masters Swimming Club of the Yearaward. This award is one of the most prestigious that can be awarded to a club within the Masters Swimming NSW Branch, and is the result of the MSNSW Board noting the tremendous effort that a club has put into its promotion as well as their participation and camaraderie at swim meets, as well as members taking on time-keeping responsibilities and undertaking officials qualifications courses.

Roger Dietrich was also announced as the winner of the Gary Stutsel Award for contributing the most to the advancement of Masters Swimming in NSW in 2012. Roger planned, and then set up the MSNSW Social Media networks on the platforms of Facebook and Twitter and has continued to be one of the NSW Social Media Administrators during 2013. MSNSW saw the opportunity to use the social media platforms as a promotional tool for Masters Swimming across the state.

Million Metres Awards: This year we had three members: Anne Smyth, Cecelia Kaye and Caroline Makin achieve induction to the Million Metres Club and are now on their way to their next million!

Coaching Qualifications: Anne Smyth, Jeanette Droop, Caroline Makin and Leisa Cass completed the Masters Swimming Level 1 Coaching Course. This means we now have six qualified coaches including Brenda Day and Greg Gourley.

Techncial Officials Qualifications: Anne Smyth, Jeanette Droop, Caroline Makin, Bill Eversham,Greg Gourley, Jon McRae and Leisa Cass undertake a number of technical officials qualification courses covering timekeeping, chief timekeeper, marshalling, check starter and clerk of the course. This will go a long way to allowing us to run our first ever BPS meet in 2014 🙂

Final Wrap for 2013

The new year saw a spike in new swimmers in lane 1 and in need of stroke development, especially on Sunday nights. The club addressed this by putting two coaches on for Sunday sessions. One coach focused on working with the lane 1 swimmers, while also overseeing what lane 2 were up to. This enabled the other coach to spend more time with the speedier types in lanes 3—5, making their training more focused and not just a program at the end of the lane. The overall benefit for the club is that the retention of new swimmers this year has been significantly better than in previous years, with our membership for the year peaking at 96, the highest it has been for a long time in the club’s history.

Members managed to take part in the following events held during 2013 … great effort you Vikings!

Here’s hoping 2014 proves to be just as successful for our members and our club and we look forward to seeing you back in the pool in early January!