Report by Katrina Burgess
The 2017 NSW State SC Championships were held at the AIS pool in Canberra on 14/15 October.
It is always such a treat when a major swim meet is in our town and we are able to sleep in your own beds. It must give us an advantage because all that was seen on pool deck during the two day swim competition were happy smiling Vikings. This was also projected into the pool with all Vikings being pleased with their swims.
A swag of medals were collected and multiple personal best times.
22 Vikings entered the championships and with Blacktown having 24 swimmers it was always going to be a close battle for the overall point score trophy and relay trophy. 32 clubs made the trip to the AIS and Blacktown were victors in the overall point score by the smallest of margins – 1284 points to our Vikings points of 1064.
Firstly, thank you to everyone who spent some of their time timekeeping.. which is a great way to meet swimmers from other clubs and get a birds eye view of some good swimming techniques. Thank you to Christine Leary, Denise Druitt and Pete Sharman for committing to the club and volunteering their time to “man” the medal table over the weekend.
Special thanks to Anne Smyth for her time at the medal table as she was unable to compete in her individual events due to injury, but still managing to swim four relay legs for us!
There were so many highlights in the pool … but the most exciting had to be the relays.
We had six relay teams winning gold! Congratulations to everyone for making the relays so successful, such awesome team spirit, and to Caroline Makin for organising such fantastic teams ensuring the Vikings where a force to be reckoned with!
Congratulations to Pam Munday and Nick Grinter who achieved NSW Branch Records: Pam in F65-69 200m Breaststroke and Nick in M25-29 200m Butterfly.
It was great to watch Annette Britten and Leisa Cass swimming so well with both returning from shoulder injuries. Watch Annette do Backstroke and learn how to execute perfect shoulder rotation!
Paul Quinn and Richard Phillips are both gaining fitness and swam fantastic 200m Freestyles, both winning gold. Donna Campbell and Kylie Lane continue to gain fitness and more personal best times – showing in particular in the 100m and 200m Individual Medley events.
It was sensational to have Atsuko McGowan back competing with us again – her awesome determination shone through in the extremely close finish in the Womens 160+ Freestyle Relay, clinching us the gold by a few tenths of seconds ahead of Blacktown in the next lane – what an exciting race to be involved in and watch!
Many thanks go to Ann Reid for representing Tuggeranong as a meet official in her role as inspector of turns between her individual races, with a nice 200m Butterfly in that tough event at the end of the meet.
Cecelia Kaye, Brenda Day, Tom Boyce and Andreas Falkenau all had solid swims adding valuable points for the Vikings and David Bale was stoked with his personal best times in the 100m Individual Medley and in the last event of the day, the 200m Butterfly.
Well done to Kristen Leydon who was over the moon when at the end of the meet she realised she had earned herself a couple of medals in her pet events the 100m Individual Medley and 50m Freestyle. Caroline Makin was also over the moon when she saw she had swum a personal best time in her pet event the 100m Freestyle and repeated that in the 100m Backstroke.
Greg Gourley put his coaching skills into practice and swam some excellent Backstroke events with super solid times. Toy Watkins showed us his sprint-ability with nice quick 50m Freestyle and 50m Butterfly swims.
Katrina Burgess commented that she has “enjoyed watching Helen Morris swimming over the weekend as she amazes us with her consistent improvement every time she dives into the pool – her hard work at training and endurance sessions is obviously paying off for her”.
Congratulations to those swimmers who finished as Age Group Champions: Nick Grinter, Kylie Lane, Katrina Burgess and Pam Munday.
Thank you to everyone for such a successful weekend. We may not have come away with any trophies but we were definitely winners as we executed the masters swimming motto “Fun, Friendship, Fitness” with a 100% success rate.
Full results are available.
