Gala Report

2010 has once again seen Bushey ASC continue its tradition of competing in a variety of Gala’s and swimming leagues. For a club of our size with the resources available we have achieved some notable success and our reputation for producing some of the best young swimmers in the county remains as strong as ever.  That said, this last year has witnessed considerable rebuilding of the team following the departure of some of our fastest swimmers to the biggest clubs and also a number moving overseas with their families. Additionally a number of our stalwart coaches also hung up their whistles and stop watches.  We, of course have wished them all the very best for the future.

The year always starts with the 3 Gala Hertfordshire Major League and this year as previously we entered two teams, Bushey Gold our A team back in the 2nd Division and Bushey Black in the 3rd Division. This year saw the cancelation of the second round galas due to the freezing weather and snow.  Both teams put in very credible performances and we witnessed some fantastic commitment and effort from our swimmers with many personal bests and some great relay races.

Bushey competed in the Chiltern League Division 2 galas. These galas offer an opportunity to swim against teams from quite a wide geographical area that we do not often compete against in other Leagues and inter-club galas. These galas are also unusual as all the events have “no faster than” times, so if competitors exceed these times they incur penalty points for the club.  This means we have to be very careful about gala selections to try to match the right swimmers to the right events.    In 2010 we were very successful in selecting our swimmers – sometimes winning races to fractions of a second within the NFT times.  It was all very exciting as we won all three galas and finished up as Division 2 champions.   In 2011 we will be swimming in Division 1 of the Chiltern League and have high hopes of another successful year.

For the younger end of the club we compete in the Hertfordshire ‘Peanuts’ League. There are categories for boys and girls aged 9, under 11, under 12 and under13. Competing in this league is a great opportunity for swimmers to get a sense of competing in a team but also focusing on their individual events. Once again this is a 3 gala league and the Bushey team swam very well and achieved 5^th place in Division 2.

 The club also competed in a number of other one off and invitation galas in which we had some fun and recorded many creditable performances.

The most challenging league that we compete in is the National League and this is held over the last 3 months of the year. Bushey has only recently joined this league and we swim in the London Division. Remarkably this covers a huge geographical area with teams as far away as Norwich involved. The first 2 galas swimming against many much bigger clubs saw some great efforts by our swimmers and many personal bests. The final gala witnessed a fantastic night for the team with Bushey winning the Gala in fine style.

I would like to express my thanks to the Club Captains who have been excellent this year in their support and organisation of the younger swimmers pool side at galas.  Also I would particularly like to mention Jane and Robin Willis for their organisation of the Chiltern Team and the Black Team. Mention to must be made of Neil Fraser in relation to the Peanuts team and Jamie O’Malley for his support and assistance to me for the senior teams.

Swimming can be seen as an individual sport, but the experience of competing as part of a team certainly seems to motivate and provide pleasure and a sense of both purpose and achievement to our squads. 

Finally, and there are too many to mention here, I recognize all the unsung efforts of our willing volunteer officials and time keepers. Bushey always has fantastic support in this vital area.

Richard Henson

Gala Manager, Bushey Amateur Swimming Club