Banbridge

Banbridge at South Lakes was the host for the last long course gala before Division 2 and Division 1 summer nationals. This was the last chance for swimmers across our squads to obtain qualification times. As expected this gala was over subscribed and very busy.

In the Development Squad, Marco Allen, Alex Rea, Alexander Murphy, and Ethan Smyth had fantastic swims, lots of PB’s, very good racing skills on display. Marco obtained an additional Division 2 swim, followed with a 3rd place medal in the 50 Breaststroke.

Not to be outdone, Annabella Cole, Megan O’Mahony and Olivia Beggs swam some amazing races against much older, experienced competition. There were PB’s across the board, with Annabella Cole taking 1st in the 50m Breaststroke and 2nd in the 50m Butterfly.

Our Junior National and Senior Sqaud swimmers were at the event to hone their racing skills, and to obtain additional swims at the summer nationals.

For the Junior National swimmers, Asha McIlroy, Eve McKeown and Owen Wasnidge all swam well with Asha getting a PB in the 50m Breaststroke.

In the National Sqaud, Sophie Doran, Grace Coyle, Daniel Beggs, Maya Niblock and Charlie Morriss were very strong across a number of events. Sophie posted a PB in the 100m Freestyle, followed by Daniel Beggs in the same event. Charlie Morriss, placed 1st in the 100 Freestyle and 3rd in the 50m Breaststroke both with PB’s.

Well done to all swimmers, we now look forward to supporting our swimmers at European Juniors, Commonwealth and European Games, and Irish Summer Nationals.

Development Time Trials

So this most peculiar of seasons has now gotten underway and, while it is without doubt a little strange, we are trying to deliver a program that is built around developing good skills and understanding of the sport for our development squads.

But, lets be honest, we all want to have the opportunity to swim fast.

The absence of galas, at least for the next wee while, has meant that we have had to look at alternative ways to do what we love to do – swim fast.

With the development squad this is taking the form of time trials every 5 weeks.

#teamlarne

The 1st of these took place this week in Larne. It was great to see that the skills we have been working on for the last month or so have started to look good under a little more pressure, everyone performed really well with no illegal strokes or turns and no fast starts.

Over the 2 sessions we had 109 swims and this brought 93 either personal bests of new times (according to my database anyway)

Well done everyone on a great couple of days and I cant wait to see the improvement in the next 5 weeks.

Results are available below

development-time-trialDownload