Open Meet Report

We attended a number of Open Meets in 2009 of varying standards and varying team sizes.  Many of our swimmers came away with medals from these meets, as well as a host of PB’s, speed awards and club records over the course of the year.

 

Special mention should be made of our BAGCAT (13/U) girls at the Herts County Championships who between them managed to accrue 5 medals, numerous places either in finals or in the top 8 of their event and were overall placed 12^th in the County – a major achievement when pitted against the big clubs like Hatfield, Watford and Bishops Stortford.

 

The great thing about Open Meets is that you get to choose which events you want to swim – rather than a Team Manager selecting for you.  The not so good thing is if you are there but your friends didn’t enter, but of course there is a remedy for that – persuade them that they should swim too.  The more people we get, the closer we come to having the same team spirit we get at the league galas.

 

That is not to say that we haven’t had great team spirit even with the small band of swimmers who have gone to these galas.  I have been very impressed by the way they have supported each other, even though it sometimes gets difficult when we have 3 (or even 4 once) swimmers in the same race.  I should also say that behaviour has been excellent, making my life on poolside far easier and enjoyable.

 

So as we move into 2010 (and by the time you read this the 1^st Open Meet of the year will already be behind us), make a resolution to come along to at least one of the events we are attending.  We already have the following dates in the calendar:

 

Date	Event Title	Location
08-09/05/2010	Stevenage Open Meet	Stevenage
16/10/2010	Hemel Open Meet	Hemel Hempstead Sports Centre
21/11/2010	Herts Dev Meet	The Venue, Borehamwood

 

Keep an eye on the website for full details of each event nearer the time and also for other meets we are likely to attend for which we don’t yet have details, which include:

 

Watford – March

Watford Middle Distance – November

Hoddesdon – September  (NFT gala)

Cheshunt – October

 

And of course, if you find out about a meet you would like to go to, please let me know.

 

Finally, it would be remiss of me not to thank those who have helped me out on poolside (so I don’t have to personally attend every session of every meet) – particularly Sue Armitage, Dean Barnes, Alan Brown, Neil Fraser, Jamie O’Malley, Jackie Summerfield and Sarah Wray for the various Club Open Meets and Richard Henson and Sue Armitage for the County Championships (and apologies if I missed anyone – your help is appreciated nonetheless).

 

I look forward to seeing many more of you at the Open Meets this year.

 

Kevin Binns

Open Meet Co-ordinator