Following a well earned rest over the Christmas holidays, the Tenby Dolphins club swimmers are once again back in full training.

All members will now be aware of the revised squad times and swimming sessions which have been introduced to bring us in line with a directive from Swim Wales, who are the governing body for the sport in Wales. As a further consequence of this directive, Tenby Dolphins no longer carry out Learn-to-Swim sessions, with the intention that the club has more time to develop competitive swimming in our area. In future, Learn-to-Swim lessons will be organised by the local authority (please contact Tenby Leisure Centre for more details). Tenby Dolphins are, however, able to continue to teach swimming to children who have reached a set standard by a given age. Details of this together with the 2007 squad qualifying times are on the club notice board.

As with many reorganisations it takes time to adjust, and we expect that it will take a few weeks for everyone to get used to the new system. Head coach and team manager John and Steph Amos have put a great deal of thought and planning into the new squad structures to best accommodate the swimmers of differing abilities within the pool time available to the club. Please be patient, because the squads have been planned with the swimmers' best interests at heart!

Competition Results

Unusually we have no detailed results to report in this edition. The Pembrokeshire 800m and 1500m Championships were held on Saturday, but at the time of writing, the final analysis was not available. It will be covered in the next report.

However, we can report that the Tenby Dolphins Christmas Party was once again a great success. The club members who attended all had a great time, enjoying the disco, games and a sumptuous buffet and collecting a variety of great prizes from the grand prize raffle.

The party is also the time of year when head coach John Amos announces his eagerly anticipated choices for the winners of several annually awarded prizes.

The 2006 award winners were: Most Improved Boy -Elliot Hoad; Most Improved Girl - Eleri Canton; Most Improved Swimmer Overall - Billy Truman; Coach's Choice Award - Matt Davie. The members of the boys relay team who attended the National Championships at Sheffield in August were also presented with an award. Congratulations to all of you.

Some pictures of the prize winners and medallists at the 2006 Club Championships have now been posted on the web site.

Forthcoming Events Here we go again! January 12-14: Swim Wales New Year Dragon Meet at the WNP Swansea. Good Luck to all Tenby entrants!

January 20: Swansea Valley Sprint Meet, Pontadawe.

January 27: Urdd Junior and Senior Finals at WNP Swansea. Good luck to all qualifiers. For those mums and dads who have not yet been to the National Pool, try to go along and support the swimmers. It is a fantastic facility and well worth a visit.

February 3: Dyfed Senior League Round One. For ages nine and over. Please check notice board for selection.

February 15-18: West Wales Champs, Penlan, Swansea.

February 24-25: West Wales Champs, Penlan, Swansea. Two weekends of exciting individual and relay events where you get the chance to take on swimmers from across the region. Entries closed.

Club News The major piece of news other than our squad reorganisation is that our Junior Squad coach Neil Hensman hung up his whistle at the end of 2006. Many thanks for all your efforts over the years Neil, you will be greatly missed by swimmers and coaches alike.

Our web site is now up-to-date with current results, news, photos, etc. Please check it out if you want more information on anything reported in these press releases.

It's not all hard work at the club. On January 2, a huge group of swimmers and family members headed off en-masse to the Grand Theatre in Swansea to enjoy a pantomime production of Aladdin. Thanks to Paul Dedoncker for organising the details. Everyone had a great time. Oh no they didn't. Oh yes they did!

Finally, the swimmers improve so rapidly it's hard to keep track of things. Following the Club Championships, Thomas Baker, Hari Truman and Rebekah Gwyther all achieved the necessary times to move up to the senior squad (what is now known as Squad 3 Senior).

Apologies for missing this earlier and belated congratulations to all three of you!