Sunday 17th September at Central Baths, Wolverhampton saw the new style County sprints split into Junior and Youth, due to entry numbers last year.  The swimmers and spectators were packed into the pool and Stourbridge SC has we have for four years in a row once again broke its own records for entry with 33 swimmers qualifying for event (remember the ages was only 9-13!!).

With any gala or meet so early in the season the chance of swimmers hitting a PB is very remote after being on holiday and only a few weeks into training still rather unfit!!  You shouldn’t eat those pies!!  However it seemed I was going to be proved wrong, with a number of tremendous swims (thankfully only going up to 13 I didn’t have to slip into my whale skin!). Sitting at the shallow end the atmosphere in our area was great with shouting coming from all directions!

Across both marathon sessions!  There was excellent swimming by everyone with a number of people gaining PB’s which left me speechless – now that doesn’t happen very often!  Overall as a club we did really well.  Sorry I can’t mention everyone but you would be reading this for days on end!

The medallists were:
Katie Jones, Graham Harrington, Ant Parkes, Emma Pay, Lauren Sanders, Tom Asprey, Sarah Pearson & Lisa Henderson.  Many of these were multi-medallists across events - well done everyone!

Special mention must also go to “G” (aka Graham Harrington!), Ant Parkes and Sarah Pearson who qualified for the dash for cash or the skins! – What a lovely event!  In the boys skins, Ant was the only 12 yr old to qualify which was a great achievement and stayed in until Round 4.  G swam well also but saw his dash for cash pay off by getting 3rd place.  In the girls, Sarah also swam well but at the end of the day was rather tired, to say the least, and managed to survive the fly once but not twice, getting through to Round 3.

Well done everyone!

Stewart
Head Coach