Thank you to Adrienne for organising this event. We had around 100 people attend – with enough (yummy) food to feed everyone, and then some. It was a very enjoyable afternoon, with the inflatable toy, as always, a huge hit with the kids. Those swimmers awarded were:
Age Champions (Age in brackets)
- George Coorey (5)
- Amelia Coorey (6)
- Alexandra Grady (7)
- Teagan Lauder & Cooper Randall (8)
- Charlotte Atkinson & Aleksis Gigovic (9)
- Grace Coorey & Wei-Zhang Chan (10)
- Ainslee Togia & Callum Lauder (11)
- Clare Capes/Charlotte Coorey & Danilo Gigovic/Conor Oslington-Elliot (12)
- Ben Milinkov (13)
- Monique Chow & Toby Rull (14)
- Catherine Mann & Wei-Kin Chan (15)
We had four swimmers receive Encouragement Awards: Monique Chow, Jackson Price, Jamison Land and Ricki-lani Togia
The Aggregate Points Champion for most improved over the Club Nights went to David Galvin. Most Outstanding Performance went to Lauren Rettie for her two Golds at National Age, and Coaches Trophy was awarded to Calypso Sheridan, in part for her 9 State Medals and State Age Champion.
Well done to all our swimmers who received awards and thank you to all our families for supporting this event. If anyone has any photos from the event, I would love to put some into the website…
Todays bingo winner was Liam Randall. Well done Liam!!!
Today’s bingo winner is Riley dent, well done Riley!!
Bingo is a swimming game we had 6 different times in which the kids had to make Andrew was the winner for today. Well done Andrew!!
We have made a commitment to improve everyone’s kicking this winter – something I have felt has been a weakness amongst our squads for some time. However, we do have some very good kickers! Ricki, Aimee and Lachlan all completed their biggest kick set ever and did it easily! Well done guys and a great job from Tegan and Sonia in getting them to this stage.
From Monday 7th May, the Senior squad will be seperated into three distinct squads. The main reason for this is so that each swimmer can better achieve their own goals. Each squad will focus on a different level of competition (School/State, National Age, National Open) and as such will have different requirements. I have attached a set of requirements and standards that will be used as guidelines for each squad. These were explained to the swimmers who attended the meeting yesterday. It is important to understand that these are guidelines only and that swimmers will be selected for squads based on:
- Their skill level
- Their ability to learn, commit and adapt (training and racing history)
- Their performance at competitions
- Age
I will have individual talks with all the senior swimmers about their goals for this coming season next week. So if everyone in the senior squad could have a think about the following two things for the talk:
- Your long-term goals for swimming - what you would like to ultimately achieve this season and in the next few seasons
- How many sessions you can devote to swimming – this may change during the year based on schoolwork and other commitments (e.g. holidays) so make sure you talk to your parents and that you are in agreement with your training session commitment.
Coaches for each squad will be: Myself for the National Squad, Dale for the National Development Squad and Tegan for the State Squad. I understand that parents may also want to have talks with myself, Dale or Tegan, either about this coming season or the previous season. Unless you feel this is very urgent, could you please arrange these once I have talked to all swimmers and new squads are in place (i.e. after May 7th).
Squad standards 2012-13
Well done intermediates 800 time trial…
There will be a meeting for all senior swimmers this Tuesday 24th at 4pm at the pool. So if you’re not training that afternoon please try and make this meeting. It will only go for about 30mins and there will be training afterwards for those doing the session. If you’re unable to make it please let me know as essential information about the senior squad structure and program will be discussed. For those easing their way back into training , this will also be a good time to sort out your sessions for the next few weeks.
River City had 12 swimmers compete - three relay ‘specialists’ and nine individuals. Even though this isn’t the biggest team we have had at Nationals (which peaked at 14 a few years ago), it was certainly the youngest. We had three 12 year olds -Molly Atkinson, Annalise Salm and Daniel Ashcroft; two 13 year olds – Calypso Sheridan, Callum Parbery; four 14 year olds - Toby Rull, Kelly Dent, Mary Elphinstone, Jackson Price; and three oldies – Lauren Rettie, Mikaela Brittain and Brookly Jones. For six out of the nine individual swimmers, it was their first national age meet.
Three swimmers made a total of ten finals with three medals coming from those finals.
- Lauren Rettie successfully defended her 2011 titles with wins in the 100 and 200 Bk. Both very good swims and right on her PB’s. Lauren also finaled in the 200IM and ended up 4th for that event. This now puts Lauren onto the Trans Tasman team – though she will have to wait to see where that exactly goes! Congrats on your first national team – well deserved!
- Claypso Sheridan made five finals - 200 Bst, 200IM, 200Bk, 100Bk and 400IM of which she won the silver in the 200BK. A huge effort as good times were tough to come by for Calypso for the week. She swam some very good races but just wasn’t in form for the meet. So a great results for your fist Nationals Calypso.
- Toby made two finals in the 100 and 200 Fst. I think the excitement of the meet got to Toby and he didn’t race in his usual confident manner. He still put in 100% effort and I’m sure has learnt some lessons from this meet. I’m sure Toby will take up the challenge of some tough training and racing over the coming season and will be amongst the medals at the 2013 Nats.
In regards to PB’s, this was probably the worse meet I have had (to put it bluntly). I think this was mainly due to the fact that most swimmers had peaked for State Schools (two weeks prior to Nats) where they all seemed to do excellent times. The School meet was also within everyone’s ‘comfy zone’ so they raced their events a lot better. Whereas the Nationals were a big leap up for most swimmers and this caused quite a few to forget their race plans and race poorly. This is why it is so important to have a race model, train towards that race model and race that model as often as you can – no matter whether it is a regional, state, national or international meet – it’s all exactly the same race model.
On a positive note, with such a young team, next years Nationals should be very exciting. They are being held in Adelaide, so make sure you book your accommodation asap if you plan on going as it fills very quickly around the pool.
Can I just finish with a big thank you to all the parents who have done such a great job of preparing and supporting their children. All those early mornings and long weekends… I’m sure your little swimmer appreciates and thanks you every day for the efforts you put in. Thank you.
Hi Everyone
Please click on this link to download an order form and also information relating to getting some River City Rapids club gear. This information is also available on the MERCHANDISE page of this website.
