On Sunday 23rd October both Faye Hermon & I were selected to swim for Suffolk in the ASA National County Team Championships at Ponds Forge Sheffield. We were collected by coach in Ipswich on Saturday afternoon and travelled up to Sheffield with the rest of the County team.
When we got to Ponds Forge on Sunday morning the atmosphere was fantastic with 38 teams gathering to compete in two divisions. Division 1, which Suffolk was in, had 20 teams and Division 2 the other 18. The two divisions raced alongside each other with the pool spilt into two 25m pools for the racing. We were soon poolside and being told where our team area was, it is the biggest event both Faye and I had swam in to date and we couldn’t believe how busy it was, all the teams were dressed up, had fun mascots and nearly all the swimmers had some form of body or face paint on everybody was really getting in the spirit of things.
After we had warmed up there was an opening ceremony where two swimmers from every team were introduced and paraded round the pool. Soon it was time for the racing to start. The age groups were 12/13, 14/15 & 16/17 years and there were races for boys and girls in each of the 4 strokes at 100m as well as a medley relay, the final event was a 6 x 50m freestyle relay with a girl and boy from each age group taking part. I swam in the 100m backstroke and gained a pb finishing higher placed than I started which I was really pleased with, then I also swam the 50 backstroke leg of the team relay, again bettering my time. Faye swam the freestyle leg of the relay, also in a pb time. All the Suffolk swimmers swam really well and at the end of the day after a fantastic final swim Suffolk ended up with 290 points and standing 12th in the Division 1 table, this was compared to 16th position last year, everybody was really pleased that Suffolk will be in Division 1 again next year as the bottom four teams are relegated to Division 2. I really hope that some of you get the opportunity and are selected to swim in this event as it was an amazing experience and there was great team spirit from every team there. If any of you would like to, you can visit the asa website and watch the you tube life stream video of the event so you can see what we experienced.
(Report by Thomas Boyt)
Well done to Faye and Thomas. They have represented the club well and been a huge inspiration to the younger swimmers in the club.
Check out the attached link which has the full details and results: http://www.swimming.org/countyteamchamps/division-one-live-stream
