Result –
1st – Fleetwood 256
2nd – Holywell 248
3rd – Chorley 225
4th – Flixton 214
5th – Altrincham 195
6th – Nantwich 131
7th – Layland 122
Gala times have been added to the club databased which has been uploaded to the Facebook Group and sent out via Email.
What a Great start to this years Arena League Competition. Round 1’s team was made up of lots of first time appearances in the Arena League, all of whom have very much proved their value in the team tonight with some great swims and personal bests broken, well done the following for your first appearance Eva Higgins, Olivia Hill, Olivia Rowland, Tallulah Conley, Jack Jarvis, Sophie Gaved, Ruby Clay, Lydia Furness, Oliver Cunningham, Summer Wood, Emily Stewart.
Strong swims were seen all round (too many to mention). We were missing some of our regular big hitters such as Lucy Cooke, Daisy May Lewis, Eber Meyer Clayton and Rory Keilty but hopefully they will be able to join the team to build on the first round performance in the next round.
We still have a relatively young squad that is continually improving. For example, our ‘Ladies’ team tonight has an average age of 14 years old but showed great maturity. They were supported by lots of swimmers swimming up age groups, for instance we had 8 x 12/13 year old girls swimming races across the 13 and under, as well as 15 and under age groups. It is great to see the club have such great depth in the pool of swimmer in that particular age group that we have 8 swimmer that were picked and still have talented swimmers in reserve. In contrast to our young Ladies team, we had some big guns on display with our ‘Gents’ team (average age over 20+) comprised of Alisdiar Stout, Matthew Armstrong, James Simpson and Ben Kerry. All of whom swam superbly, including Matthew, who was great to see coming back from University to swim and also Ben Kerry who has not swam competitively for 4 years, but shows how talented he is with 54 seconds for 100 freestyle and 58 seconds for 100 Fly!!!!! These older swimmers are great examples of sportsmanship and they are certainly individuals the younger swimmers can learn a lot from!!!.
I’d like to thank everyone for traveling all that way, and also to parents who have offered lifts to other children. Without your commitment in being ‘taxi’ service, your children wouldn’t be able to gain valuable competition experience. I’d like to especially thank swimmers who only competed in the relay races, you travelled a long way and might have been waiting a long time between races, but your contribution is just as valued as the Individual races.
Sadly, we had 3 disqualifications which had an influence on the overall score. With out the DQs, we would have come 3rd and been fighting for second position.
The Arena League is a National League and tonight there were 333 clubs taking part in 53 galas, involving 1200. My favourite state from Arena is; there are 800 technical officials, 500 poolside assistants and 1000 team managers/coaches, all of these are volunteers and the competition could not run with out them. If any parents ever wants to lend a hand poolside, as a team manager or as a swimming official please find one of the clubs committee members to discuss our clubs needs.
Star of the Gala –
