Diddy League Round 2 Saturday 12^th May 2007

First time in a 25m pool for a number of years, I arrived with our Head Coach Stew, in a confident mood after an excellent first round performance. He was keen to see some of our new swimmers as he had not seen them swim competitively for a number of months.

What was to follow was rather disappointing I’m afraid, we were missing a number of swimmers which really put the pressure on the others.

The first section of the Diddy gala’s always seem to be a little bit of a struggle, so I was not unduly worried even though we were 5^th place after 12 events, 3 sixth places, 2 fifth places, 5 third places and 2 second places, this really isn’t good enough to compete with the likes of Worcester and Phoenix A, however I expected us to compete with Stratford, Ludlow and Orion.

The next section was a complete disaster, with the exception of the 10 Girl’s Medley Relay, who won their event, we had a D.Q. and swimmers not on the blocks in time, in all the time I have been team manager this has never happened, this is why a number of people help on poolside, I can either make sure that all the swimmers are on the blocks on time or continue to let my son and various others do this for me, so that I can watch and make sure I am swimming every one in the correct events and able to make a complete report.

From now on all swimmers will remain on poolside and will not leave the area that we are in unless they have asked permission. It is not possible to send somebody to the showers / changing rooms to look for anybody. It may look as if the gala is going on for ages, but believe me the races come round extremely quickly and their simply isn’t time to mess about.

After 24 events we had 69 points compared to Worcester’s 110, and still in 5^th place.

Next section, 10’s Girl’s relay to the rescue again, with a fine win a couple of second places, but we were still bringing up the rear with the rest of the events.  Phoenix Youth were now beating us by 50 points.

In the final part of the gala things were much the same, again with only one winner Katie Jones. A couple of second places and the rest again bringing up the rear.

Final Points

Phoenix                      222

Worcester                  219

Ludlow                        177

Stratford Sharks        170

Stourbridge                147

Orion                           129

I will give a swimmer and team of the night, and it has to be Katie Jones for the only individual win and the 10’s Girl’s Relay which includes Katie, Emma, Nat, Kay and Emily for winning both of their races, well done to you.

We really will have to work hard now to finish in the top 10 and will struggle to make the final, which is a shame, lets hope we can do it better in the next round and make sure every body is available, and in the right place at the right time.

Thanks to my timekeepers Steve and John, my Judge Richard, my assistants Zoe and Alex, who worked extremely hard to keep every body in order.