At this time of year there is seldom a weekend without a swimming gala, so with training as well, everyone is pretty busy. Nevertheless, it does not seem to dampen the enthusiasm, and over the past few weeks our younger club members have taken part in the second round of the Dyfed Junior League, and a group of the more senior swimmers took part in the 2006 Swim Swansea Long Course Open Meet.

COMPETITION RESULTS

The first gala covered by this report was the second round of this year's Dyfed Junior League. This was held at the Carmarthen Leisure Centre on Saturday, May 13. The Carmarthen pool is a five-lane 25m pool, so there is naturally room for five teams to compete simultaneously. However, on this occasion, Tenby were only up against Aberystwyth, Amman Valley and Cardigan.

The age range of the competition is for swimmers of 12 years and under, so the team was made up of members of the Senior and Junior squads, with a selection of our youngest members who are still working their way towards a squad qualifying time. Our youngest competitor on the day was Carys Davies, who at five years of age, was seven years younger than the swimmers in the oldest age group!

The opposition on the day was not particularly strong, and Tenby soon built an unassailable points lead, which despite their best efforts, the others were unable to challenge.

Team manager Steph Amos had picked a large group of swimmers to better assess how some of the younger members of the team were developing.

Junior squad coach, Neil Hensman, was also on hand to check on how his charges were progressing. With the final looming on Sunday, June 25, Steph was working towards a decision about who will be selected for the big event. There were some tremendous performances throughout, so we are optimistic of a good result in a few weeks time. The Tenby team consisted of: Carys Davies, Madison Vickery, Kiera Slack, Hannah Saunders, Ffion Davies, Chloe Rees, Niamh Slack, Casie Paxton, Sophia James, Rebekah Gwyther, Rachel Hensman, Sydney Vickery, Eleri Canton, Bethan Davie, Claudia Belli, Lauren Arthur, Eleanor Brown, Sadie Griffiths, Kira Hardy, Gareth Davie, Daniel Davies, Luke Dedoncker, Edward Hurle, Myles Johnson, Arron Lloyd, Lewis Bridle, Rhys Davies, Daniel Evans, Adam Muskett, Elliot Hoad, Henrik Jaakola, Dominic Ciccotti, Jacob Griffiths, Samu Jaakola, Josh Thomas, Paul Rees, Cheyne Lloyd, Scott Dedoncker, Jack Hawkey.

In contrast to the very short team gala above, the second event reported here, is the 2006 Swim Swansea Long Course Open. This took place over the weekend of May 19-21 at the 50m Welsh National Pool in Swansea. Whereas the junior gala took a couple of hours, this competition was for 12 hours per day over a three-day weekend. A long and very tiring weekend for those who swam on all three days, but necessary because of the number of events for the various age groups, in different strokes and over different distances.

Despite the Friday being a school day, there were a large number of entrants from across South and West Wales and from swimming clubs much further afield. As well as being up against the very tough regional competition and a number of individual entrants from various clubs around the south-west, there were also strong teams of swimmers from two Swindon clubs, the Tigersharks and Swindon Dolphin. Swim Swansea had their usual selection of Welsh record holders out in force, and the swimmers from Bridgend competed well. There was even a Cardiff based member of the Welsh Commonwealth Games squad taking part.

The Tenby swimmers who entered the competition were: Gemma Amos, Daniel Brown, Eleri Canton, Lewys Canton, Nathan Clarke, Bethan Davie, Matt Davie, Johnnie Delahunty, Lloyd Delahunty, Sadie Griffiths, Andrew James, Jack Lear, Coral Lewis, Sam Lewis, Cheyne Lloyd and Holly Watkins-Rees. All of the Tenby entrants produced some good performances over the course of the weekend, and made finals in most of the events they swam in, and as seems to be the case in most galas at the moment, they produced yet more impressive personal best times.

Those scoring podium positions and taking home medals once again were: Lewys Canton (2nd in 13Y 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m and 1500m Freestyle events); Nathan Clarke (2nd in 13Y 100m Backstroke); Bethan Davie (3rd in 10/U 100m Breaststroke); Matt Davie (3rd in 13Y 100m Backstroke); Johnnie Delahunty (2nd in 12Y 100m Freestyle); Andrew James (1st in 14Y 100m and 200m Breaststroke, and 3rd in 14Y 100m Butterfly) and Sam Lewis (2nd in 10/U 100m Butterfly and Breaststroke, and 3rd in 10/U 100m Freestyle). Our usual congratulations to all of you. Full details can be found on the Swim Swansea or Nofio Cymru web sites.

As mentioned above, it was a tough weekend for those who swam over the full three-day weekend. Each day there were very competitive preliminary rounds in the mornings and flat-out finals in the evenings. If that was not enough, for some strange reason, Matt Davie and Andrew James decided to enter the 200m Butterfly for the first time.

Swimming this once is testing enough, but as both of them made their respective finals, they had to repeat the torture twice in one day!

Anyway, to quote Andrew, he reckons that he "has now found his event," so we will no doubt see him entering these races at every available opportunity in the future! As neither he nor Matt could speak for about 20 minutes after the finals, perhaps this should indeed be encouraged!

FORTHCOMING EVENTS Things are starting to quieten down a little. The two main events coming up are: The Amman Valley Sprint Meet at Llanelli on June 10 (entries closed). The Final of the Dyfed Junior League on June 25. Please check the notice board regularly for team selection news.

CLUB NEWS Congratulations to Bethan Davie, who as the result of a fine swim in the girls 10/U 100m breaststroke race at the Swim Swansea Long Course Open, has now achieved the necessary qualifying time to join the Pembrokeshire Development Squad.

This month we say farewell and good luck to one of our younger swimmers, Elliot King, who with his family is soon moving Down Under to Sydney, Australia. Thanks to Elliot's dad Des for his support of the past couple of years. We wish you all well.