Verulam gala report june 2005

Dear Swimmers,

I hope you all enjoyed the gala. There were some great individual performances yesterday, with PBs in 19 of the 32 individual races. Congratulations to:

The U12 girls had a great night, with Matilda winning the 25m freestyle, Richelle winning the 25m fly and Sarah coming second in the 25m backstroke. The girls team (Sarah, Ela, Matilda & Richelle) won the 4 x 25m freestyle relay.

We didn't get any other first places, but Gabriel came second in the U14 boys 25m freestyle and Dan was second in the U14 boys 25m backstroke. Dan also got a third place in the U14 boys 25m fly, while Maya came third in the U14 girls 25m backstroke, Alice was third in the U14 girls 25m freestyle, the U14 girls team (Maya, Loulou, Abigail & Alice) was third in the 4 x 25m medley relay and also third in the 4 x 25m freestyle relay - this time with a team comprising Richelle, Loulou, Alice & Abigail. Finally, the mixed squadron 4 x 25m freestyle relay team (Richelle, Joshua, Abigail, Gabriel, Jasmine, Khadeem, Charlotte & Jonathan) came in third.

These were all really good results, but still not good enough for us to finish above last place, a massive 117 points behind the winners - Enfield. I think there were 2 reasons for this disappointing overall result. Firstly, as Greg said last night, we had 6 disqualifications which cost us points. It is worth pointing out that the other 5 teams only had 5 disqualifications between them, so there is a lesson to be learnt there. But a far bigger reason for the disappointing overall result was the fact that we had a very young team, with a lot of swimmers swimming out of age group. Alll the Open individual and relay races were swum by swimmers in the U16 or in some cases even U14 age group, with Abigail, Gabriel & Dan (all U14s) swimming in Open events. Gabriel & Dan both also swam in U16 relays, while Joshua & Richelle (current U12s) both swam in U14 relay races. Given, the fact that so many of our swimmers were competing against swimmers a lot older and bigger than them, I think they did really well.

Next year, when a few of our current U16 swimmers have moved into the Open category, we could and should do much better in this gala, especially if some of our better swimmers, who were not available yesterday, are included in the team.

Best wishes,

Jenny

P.S. A full results sheet is attached.

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