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Inter-Club League Report 2010

On four Sunday nights in May and June, a team of twelve younger Pirates have been trekking out to Cannons Creek Pool in Porirua for this year's "Inter-Club League".

This is an annual tournament for swimmers who haven't yet qualified for the NZ Junior Champs to get some experience of swimming competitively in a team environment. The rules are pretty heavy - up to twelve swimmers in a team with no ring-ins, no-one over twelve years old, no more than three per team older than eleven and no more than six over ten. No swimmer can do more than three swims per meet ... Big ups to Coach Olivia Melbourne who had the brain ache of trying to work out who was going to swim which event each week and gave the swimmers the confidence and focus to post some impressive PBs.

The meets were wonderfully short - done and dusted in less than an hour and a half each week. This is a formula it would be nice to see more of! It's also a chance for the younger Pirates to swim the less common 4x25 backstroke and breaststroke relays as well as the usual medley and freestyle.

Because of the mixed-age format, we had 8 year olds taking on swimmers four years older than them in most events so it's not really fair to single out individual results. More important is the consistency the team showed over the series .

Our League superstars were Lucy Bruce, Erica Campbell, Kate de Boer, Jade Edmonds, Georgiana Forsythe, Callum Hancock, Luca Hart Ferrari, Julia Hogg, Lucy Hornabrook, Isabella Paotonu who dominated the 25m backstroke in the opening meet, Ellen Scott and Ruth Trow who took the 50m fly by two seconds in meet 2 and 50m backstroke by nearly 3 seconds in the third meet.

Thanks of course to coach Olivia for her support and guidance to the swimmers, to Pauline Trow who managed the team effortlessly through the tournament and the parents who volunteered for timekeeping, inspecting turns and setting up - and to Porirua City Aquatics who ran a competitive but friendly and low-key league. 

It was great to see the swimmers getting to know each other over the 2 months - and there's no ignoring the result that almost everyone has qualified for races in the Wellington Short Course champs through the series. Well done everyone!

John Hancock