Norths AUSSI Masters

A comparatively warm and sunny winter’s day greeted the 32 North Sydney Masters swimmers and hundreds of other swimmers from around the state for the annual NSW State Relay Meet on July 18. While many of our club members were battling the seasonal ailments and other injuries, we all rallied together with great esprit de corps to place third overall. This is a great result considering the top two teams had substantially more swimmers competing than we did!

A big congratulations goes to our new swimmers who competed in this meet (or just plain competed!) for the first time ever. We could not have achieved the result we did without people putting up their hand to ‘have a go’, however unfamiliar you may have been with racing conditions. It was fantastic to see everyone participate so willingly and with so much enthusiasm. So thank you to all the new swimmers for giving it a go! I hope your experience at the Relay Meet has bolstered your confidence and will encourage you to enter in more swim meets in the upcoming months.

A number of teams produced some outstanding results, breaking club, state and national records – and even setting some national and world records! Here is a list of our state, national and world record-breaking and record-setting relays (club records will be recorded on the Norths website in due course!):

Mixed 4x200 Freestyle Relay – Mel Speet, Colin Hannah, Gill O’Mara & John Kain (National Record)
Men’s 4x100 Freestyle Relay – Dave Lovelace, Alan Godfrey, John Kain & Andrew Aebi (National Record)
Women’s 4x100 Freestyle Relay – Gill O’Mara, Melissa Beames, Mel Speet & Isla Hale (National Record)
Mixed 4x100 Medley Relay – Christina Echols, Dave Lovelace, Andrew Aebi & Louise Stevenson (National Record)
Women’s 4x100 Medley Relay – Louise Stevenson, Christina Echols, Mel Speet & Gill O’Mara (World Record)
Women’s 4x50m Freestyle Relay – Gill O’Mara, Mel Speet, Louise Stevenson & Isla Hale (State Record)

For full results including (most) split times, check out the NSW Aussi Masters website at http://www.aussimastswimnsw.org.au/ and click on the Relay Meet Results.

Also, big congratulations to Christina Echols, who set new age group state records in lead legs of relays for the 50m and 100m Backstroke!

To cap off a great meet, a number of the Norths Team celebrated with dinner at Ribs and Rumps. After a couple of glasses of wine and generous meal (and, for some, a couple of prescription strength Voltarens!), the aches and pains of the day were long forgotten and discussion centred around the next big meet – STATE LONG COURSE CHAMPIONSHIPS IN OCTOBER!!!

While we are all to be congratulated on our efforts as a team, I would like to thank Alan Godfrey in particular for all of his help assembling and re-assembling teams in the days leading up to the meet. A number of you may be aware that Alan also swam the relay meet while he was quite unwell and later checked in to St Vincent’s hospital to resolve the source of pain: An acutely inflamed appendix which was promptly operated on and removed! Alan, you are definitely the recipient of the honorary “TROOPER” Award for your dedication and commitment!

Well done and congratulations to all swimmers and let’s set our sights on what the club can achieve at State Long Course Championships in October and in the lead-up to that event!

Cheers,

Gill

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