Head Coach County Round Up…

Head Coaches Counties Report 2016

The County Champs had a new format for 2016 with British swimming imposing heats and finals on the shorter events. This meant almost twice the number of swims for some of our stronger athletes. Alongside that, the counties were also condensed into 2 weekends and the number of teams was reduced.

The net result was that Marlins swimmers had to be more selective about the events they swam, resulting in less individual events swum in total.

As ever we had superb support from our wonderfully rowdy travelling supporters and a great number of Officials participating, including a number of J1 officials trying to get their qualifications

The finals were very exciting and it was great to see many of our swimmers excelling in improving their finals times repeatedly after doing PB times just to make the finals.

There were some stunning performances in all age groups  with 24 golds , 26 silver and 21 bronze medals , with 154 top 6 places altogether. Due to the changes in format it’s not possible to compare directly the number of medals achieved this year with last year. There was a drop in the total medals and top 6 places but this was not unexpected.

It was a pleasure to see Marlins swimmers represented in almost every final and performing to such a high level. After 2 weekends of continuous high level performance there were many exhausted athletes on poolside but the efforts  put in by all teams on the final Sunday were superb , with the men’s 14-17 freestyle team leading the field to take Gold and the  10-13 mixed freestyle team and girls freestyle teams getting desperately close to beating City of Derby teams. There were many other fantastic individual and team performances throughout the weekends.

I was delighted with the swims, the attitude, the atmosphere, the banter and the positive approach from a wonderful group of athlete’s coaches and team managers. Well done to everyone who swam and especially those who put everything into multiple events at an exhausting but exhilarating County Champs 2016.