News

2023-06-06 10:49:18

A message from Rob Nicholas:

Well, I hope everyone enjoyed the first weekend of Club Champs 2023.

After a slightly shaky start on Saturday evening I think we managed to recover and the weekend went as well as it could; it was great to see so many of our swimmers competing across all levels at such a high standard.

I was chatting with Head coach John Vinson last night at training and we were both really impressed with the number of PB's being set being driven by the healthy competition between team mates. So thank you to all the swimmers for making it such a great weekend and also for being so welcoming to our friends from White Cliffs Swim Club who were joining us for their first ever club championships.

A special thanks to Malcolm Keysell and Lee Mullins from our fellow eXcel member clubs, Faversham and Herne Bay who acted as referees on Saturday evening. To all the DLGC volunteers who stepped up, whether you are a first timer or a seasoned pro, thank you so much for giving up your time to help this gala run smoothly. These galas mean so much to the swimmers and just would not be able to go ahead without the hard work and dedication from all of our volunteers - you are all a big part of the Awesome in Team Awesome! If you are still on the fence as to whether to volunteer, here is a quote from a first time volunteer this weekend:

"Timekeeping was a challenge at first, but it was definitely more enjoyable than sitting in the stands and I would be more than happy to volunteer again and even move forward with training as an official".

So, why not give it a try, you have not really got anything to lose and you never know, you may actually really enjoy helping whilst making a massive positive impact on the lives of some really amazing kids. I know many of you will see me running about like a headless chicken at galas, and yes it can be stressful at times, but on the whole it is actually good fun and the reward of seeing how much the swimmers enjoy it is definitely worth it so please, give it some consideration.

Moving back to the gala itself; we were lucky to have had Damien Pearce poolside over the weekend capturing some amazing photos of all of our swimmers in action. These are a massive step up from the usual iPhone photos us Team Managers snap when we have a spare minute so thank you very much to Damien and I hope he will be back at other galas for more of the same. Damien has kindly agreed for me to share his email so if anyone would like high-res copies of any of the photos then please contact him directly at:   D.Pearce87@hotmail.com

Results for all three sessions are now available on the website. Times have been submitted to rankings so should be showing online within a couple of days.

If anyone has any queries, or wants to know anything more about any element of competition, training or volunteering then please just get in touch and I will do my best to get back to you or refer you to whoever might be able to assist appropriately. Remember, this Friday is our long distance 800m event. I will send an email out regarding this tomorrow or Thursday but we are aiming for 7pm warmup so swimmers please arrive by 6:45pm. Volunteers and officials, if you could be there by 6:20pm that would be a massive help to assist with any last minute setup. If you have entered the 800m freestyle and are now unable to attend please let me know as soon as you can so we can avoid empty lanes which do really slow things down on a distance event.

Thanks again.
 
Kind Regards,

Rob Nicholas

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