Things Are Heating Up - Personal Bests Tumble at Point Score

Members of the West Coast Swimming Club held an exciting point score event at the Port Lincoln Leisure Centre on Friday 16thof November which gave swimmers another important opportunity to post personal best times towards gauging the success of their training and improvements in personal fitness.  Over 50 swimmers 
ere registered for the evenings competition travelling from Lock, Tumby Bay and Cummins to have the chance to build their own personal sense of achievement and competency to swim at a competitive level. A resonating comment from one of our parents on the night was, “My daughter swims because she feels a real sense of  achievement and pride in herself when she posts a personal best time – it’s quite underwater and she can concentrate on doing her best without her team mates or people yelling at her from the sidelines.” 

And WOW what a night for posting personal bests! Two goals that had been set from the last point score were to see Henry Lambert post a 50m freestyle time in under the current SA Country Record (held by Levi Proude) and Jade Calverly edge closer to the 1 minute mark for her 50m backstroke which would lower her potential world ranking, towards developing times good enough to see her in a Paralympic final in 2016. 
 
Two very excited swimmers left the water after their events, Henry Lambert with a 26.87 for his 50m freestyle (which would be good enough to break the existing record) and Jade Calverly with a 1.01.07 for her 50m backstroke which when compared to world rankings sees her 7th internationally and was nearly 3 seconds faster than her performance at last month’s event. Australian Paraylmpian Tanya Huebner (S6) has posted a time of 53.96 sec over this distance (7.11 sec faster) which is something Jade could put some serious thought into achieving considering her three second improvement in time over the past month. 

Two killer swims from breastroke specialist Luke Andrews over both the 50m and 200m distance yielded some very exciting results. His 200m breastroke swim of 2.40.34 was well under the Australian Age Qualifying time of 2.51.50 (15 year old) and within 9 seconds of qualifying for the Australian Open Swimming Championships (qualification must be in a 50m pool). He has improved a massive 10 seconds from the last time he swam in this event. This time is also clearly under the South Australian Open Country Record of 2.43.12. Similarly his
50m breastroke time was a personal best – 32.83 seconds, which is already close to two seconds faster than the existing country record (Levi Proude 34.37 – 50m pool). Luke could potentially give Ryan Mitchell’s South Australian 15 year old record a shakeup (31.29 – 50m pool) by the time the Country Championships are run. This is a record which has stood for over 10 years (set in 1993). Ryan Mitchell – originally a swimmer with the Port Augusta Swimming Club went on to win a silver medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics as part of the 4 x 100m Medley Relay Team. 

We welcome new swimmer Gerard Meyer who has provided another layer of depth to our senior swimming talent. Gerard posted times of 30.87 (50 freestyle), 40.48 (50m breastroke) and 37.51 (50m butterfly). It was fantastic to see Sheridan and Kendall Howell back in the water in preparation for our summer racing season, both posting very competitive times in all of their events. Both Natasha Hammond and Brooke Traegar swam great freestyle times –both on the 30 second mark which puts them with a great chance at the 13 year old South Australian Country Record (long course) of  30.10 seconds. Nik Constantinopoulos blasted out a great 50m freestyle (31.73) to set himself a new personal best and Harrison Adams tore up the pool in 38.10 to post the fastest 10 and under time.
 
A real stand out personal best ‘smasher’ was Jack O’Donnell (10 years) who made some outstanding improvements across all of his events with both his freestyle (53.63) and breastroke (1.09.47) races up to 10 seconds faster than when he has raced previously at point score. Kilani Colman – Smith swam a superb 50m breastroke race (55.63) knocking over 6 seconds off his previous time and at 9 years of age was competitive against swimmers up to two years older than himself. Similarly in his 50 Butterfly he shaved off 7.47 seconds (1.06.60) Sisters Tayla and Indiah Kelsey had a very close tussle in the same 50m breastroke event with the younger of the two Tayla (8 years) edging out her older sister by .3 of a second (Tayla 1.07.60, Indiah 1.07.99) Stuart Meske made a great improvement in his 50m backstoke - amazingly swimming nearly 7 seconds faster than he had previously (53.38) and it won’t be long before we see him posting times in the 40 second bracket. 
 
The 50m butterfly event provided a powerful finish to the evening with coach Jason Dipaolo going head to head with Luke Andrews – the competition spurred Luke onto a personal best but just being edged out by Jason who swam the race in 30.18 sec. Zac Kenny (9 years) swam a super 50 Fly in (1.02.97) and it was very encouraging to see lots of our junior swimmers now with the skill and determination to be able to post times in this event. Well done to Charlee Watt (7 years) and Alleigh Hamnett who competing in this event for the first time. Thanks to those parents who have supported their children’s ability to swim competently by bringing them along for their first point score. Great work - Indiana Copland, Tascha and Fraser Jordison, Thomas Kammermann and Kayla Huntley. 

All swimmers are encouraged to make a record of their own personal best achievements over each stroke and distance. An efficient way of doing this is through an Iphone App called ‘PB Go’ this enables championship  cards to be created with a record of your top 5 times, including a location and date. As nominations for swimming carnivals require accurate and up to date personal best records it is in your best interest to establish a regular and reliable way of recording your PB’s. More information on ‘PB Go’ is available  on the website www.westcoastswimmingclub.com– Latest News.