Medals galore!

PHEW! What a brilliant first weekend of swimming at the Gloucester Counties at Bristol Hengrove.

At the end of the first weekend we have already bagged a magnificent 15 medals – to put it into perspective that’s almost half our overall total from last year already and we’ve still got ten sessions to go.

For now though our tally is 8 bronze, 4 silvers, and 3 golds – but also a fantastic 43 finals places. Not only that, but head coach Steve said that what was so impressive was that even those that didn’t final were placing really high up the rankings across the board. As he put it, these were “exceptional” results.

And this is what our team managers Laura Hansen and Vic Warwick had to say about the weekend:

Two long days poolside, the swimmers and team managers (Vic, Laura, Rich & Rich) kept the team spirit high as every swimmer supported and congratulated each other despite sweltering conditions and sometimes long waits between races. The enthusiasm was admirable and we are looking forward to another weekend of racing next week.

The team managers worked well to allow the coaches to do what they need to do: provide support, encouragement, critique and feedback to all the swimmers before and after each race, including split times etc.

There are so many people to thank who work incredibly hard behind the scenes to ensure that everything is in place prior to and during the county championships: Brian, Claire, John and our team of officials and volunteers. Team Managers could not do their roles without all this background support.

From a parent’s perspective, who had the luxury of watching everything from the stands, it was a delight to see our children not only perform so well but also look after each other so well. As much as I would like to say my highlight was seeing my daughter race, it was actually probably watching her and others helping Millie Ravenscroft with her science homework while they waited to do the 800m Freestyle!

And so now we look forward to next weekend with some really tough races ahead. I have a feeling though we’ll be back with some more fab results next Sunday evening.

P.S. Any parent whose child wins a medal and would like me to feature it in a future blog post please send it to me at clarawigginsfreelance@gmail.com – thanks!