BASC has had a very busy year for club competitions with three Club Championship events, 3 Time Trials and the 200m Freestyle, 200m IM and 800m/1500m Freestyle competitions. There’s also been some changes with the replacement of the 1500m Girls event with a 800m event to keep us in line with National/Regional/County events. There are more changes coming in 2016 as well.
Over 100 swimmers entered the 3 main events, covering over 700 swims between them and they achieved a record 21 new club championships. Many congratulations to our new record holders and to all our swimmers for their personal achievements at Club Championships.
Talking of records, I have been doing some analysis of our current club records. The chart below shows when the current club records were swam. Although some date back as early as 2004, many more of our current records were made in 2015 than in any previous year. Our swimmers just keep on getting better and smashing previous records.
We must also say a big ‘THANK YOU’ to everyone who has helped with the running of our Club competitions; they are a vital part of our swimmers’ preparation for representing BASC in external galas and we could not stage them without you!
Please keep an eye on the “splash screen” on our website for details as to when entries open and please do not wait until the last minute before entering – it makes it much harder to gauge the entry size and therefore work out the heats and timings.
Future changes: we are increasing the range of events that will be made available to swimmers in 2016. We are adding 200m events in all of the strokes (yes, including Butterfly!) plus the 400m IM. Some are being offered as Time Trials and some will replace the current middle distance competitions. Keep an eye on the website for details as to who can enter which event.
Competition dates in 2016
200m/400m Free competition Sunday 7th February
1st Club Champs Sunday 6th March
Time Trials 1 Saturday 20th March
25m/50m events for U14s, 200m events for O14s.
2nd Club Champs Sunday 15th May
800m/1500m competition Sunday 19th June
Time Trials 2 Sunday 3rd July
50m/100m events, 200m/400m Free also available
200m/400m IM Sunday 25th September
3rd Club Champs Saturday 5th November
Including the 50m Sprint
Time Trials 3 Saturday 3rd December
All events plus 200m available
Parents and swimmers are reminded that we are a competitive club and swimmers are expected to enter internal competitions. Swimmers are also expected to swim for the club if lucky enough to be picked for one of our gala squads. To not participate in competition would be like a footballer saying they’ll only do the training but won’t play in the matches against other clubs. Please support your club in this.
Alan Brown & Mark Fagan
Club Championship Organisers