On Saturday 1^st April 2006, the newly formed Diddy League ‘B’ team made their way to a rare Saturday night gala at Wolverhampton Central Baths.  This gala was organised by ex-Stourbridge S.C. members Kim and Laura Brown, and our thanks go to them for an excellent gala.  The aim of the evening was to provide an opportunity for swimmers who had not swum in a competition before to experience a gala, and mainly to have fun! 

The team was made up of a mixture of experienced gala swimmers and those that had never swum for the club before.  With the pre-gala team talk over, and team spirit awakened, the gala commenced.  Stourbridge were competing against Wednesbury, Bilston, Brierley Hill, Wolverhampton and Haden Hill.

 First win of the night came from the 11 year old girls in their medley relay. Lauren Evans, Jess Hickman, Holly Whitehouse and Kate Fletcher just clinched victory, a mere 0.19 seconds ahead of Brierley Hill.  Next to take the coveted first spot were the nine-year-old girls, Hannah Irwin, Rebecca Bradley, Megan Dudley and Beth Hickman, in their ‘mixed stroke’ relay.  This was similar to a medley relay, except that instead of the third leg being butterfly, the nine-year-olds swam front crawl.  This was done just for this gala, as well as removing the butterfly individuals from the running order, to allow more swimmers to compete that may not otherwise have done so.  So…nines, be warned, this Saturday there will be butterfly!  Anyway, our nine-year-old girls stormed to victory in this race, beating Wednesbury by a clear five seconds, well done girls!

The eleven year old girls repeated their earlier victory by also winning their freestyle relay, emphasising their domination of this age group, by again beating Brierley Hill into second place.  Following the trend, and not to be left out, the ten year old girls followed suit by winning their medley relay.  Stourbridge and Brierley Hill were given exactly the same time in this race, but we were just given the nod over Brierley Hill by the judges, and this was with Rebecca Bradley swimming up an age group!  The other girls in this race were Beth Hendy, Emily Sheppard and Abbygail Byrne (Abbygail swimming in her first ever gala - a great start!).  

The first individual win of the evening went to Kate Fletcher in the 11 years 50m backstroke, closely followed by Phoebe Facer in the 12 years 50m breaststroke and Lauren Evans in the 11 years 25m butterfly.  In amongst these races was another win from the tens girls, this time with Megan Dudley swimming up an age, in the freestyle relay.  This time we beat Brierley Hill more convincingly, by over three seconds – fab stuff girls! 

Second half of the gala did not see so many wins for us, however, we kept the standard up with many second places.  Beth Hendy clinched us another first place in the ten years 50m backstroke, beating the rest of the field by over five seconds!  Final win of the night came again from Kate Fletcher, in the girls’ 11 years 50m freestyle. 

The points were not announced at any point during the gala, so it was a case of sticking around right to the very end to find out how we got on.  Final points scores were as follows: 

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