Finally, after nearly 16 long months, last week saw a return to competition for Flo, Emily and Nathan in our platinum squad, as they qualified for and competed at the Festival of Swimming at the newly reopened Plymouth Life Centre.

It was a tough first meet back, being both long course and with fierce competition from across the whole of Devon and Cornwall, but all three swam admirably, Flo and Nathan each picking up a first place finish and all achieving excellent times.

But most importantly, it was great to see them smiling, enjoying themselves back where they belong on the starting blocks and regaining that racing buzz! As Flo commented at the end of the long day, it makes you remember what it is you are doing all the training for!

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Congratulations to our Junior Club Captains, Nathan Apps and Flo Hadley who have both been selected for the South West Regional Pathway Programme. This is the second step on the Swim England development pathway and is aimed at the top 16 boys and girls aged 12 years from the South West region. Well done Flo and Nathan – a real credit to your and your coaches’ hard work and achievements over the past year and some great news as we finally return to the pool.

After many months out of the pool, training finally returned for two of our squads. It was a great first session back for both the competition and performance squads on Friday night at the outdoor pool at Bovey Tracey. The swimmers thoroughly enjoyed being back in the water and seeing their friends in a safe, well organised, environment. A huge thank you to our Committee who have worked tirelessly to pull this together and also to Bovey Tracey Outdoor Pool for allowing us to use their lovely pool.

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We are very pleased to introduce you to our club captains:

Harry Joiner and Isobel Brown, pictured here with  junior captains Florence Hadley and Nathan Apps.

The Devon Inter Club gala followed on the Sunday where the club competed against teams from across Devon. The standard of competition was extremely high, but all of our swimmers swam extremely well resulting in Paignton coming 6th overall. Well done to all who competed.

The club had a busy weekend at the Plymouth Life Centre, kicking off on Saturday with the Devon County relay gala. Nine teams were entered for the competition with the 10/11 girls entering 3 teams! For some of our younger swimmers this was their first experience of swimming in a 50m pool, but they took up the challenge and swam brilliantly.

The 10/11 boys won silver and bronze medals and the 16 and over men’s team won two bronze medals. Alex also picked up a further medal with a swim in the schools relay event.

Thank you to all team managers and team captains who helped organise the huge contingency of swimmers.

Nearly 30 of our swimmers took part in the Dartmoor Junior Sprint Meet at the beginning of March.  The majority of our swimmers were just 8-10 years old, some swimming outside of our own club for the very first time.  Supported by a handful of our more experienced competitors, everyone stepped up to the mark in a great atmosphere with all the swimmers excited to race and cheer each other on.

It was a very successful meet, allowing Coach Kev to get a good view of where many of our swimmers are in terms of their racing ability and technique.

Altogether there were too many PBs to mention, plus a huge haul of 29 medals.  Our medallists were:  Robi Morris – 1 silver and 4 bronze, Elijah Apps – 5 gold, Phoebe Wills – 1 silver, 1 bronze, Kizzy Kirkwood – 1 bronze, Daisy Edwards – 1 gold, Jasmine O’Flaherty – 1 silver, Isabella Ashford – 1 gold, 3 silvers, Izzy Dover – 3 bronze, Morgan Ashford – 1 silver, 4 bronze, Adam Glew – 1 silver, Ethan Crocker – 1 bronze.

Special congratulations to Elijah and Isabella who respectively won top boy and top girl awards in their age groups.