This Long Course meet took place in Bangor Aurora complex on March 26 and 27th. We had eighteen swimmers attending this meet, either for both days, or just one. The swimmers who attended were Edvardas Zumaras, Maddie Smith, Hannah Sheridan, Katherine Ryan, Marwin Neubert, Aoife McKenna, Seán McConnon, Caoimhe MacCinna, Áoibhín MacCinna, Adam Lynch, Tadgh Lennnon, Kristupas Januskevic, Darragh Hughes, Seán Greenan, Colin Gorman, Rebekah Gillis, Eimear Duffy and Ben Duffy.
Over the weekend our swimmers performed well, we had some great swims and some swims where our swimmers felt they might have performed a bit better. Coach Pearse was on hand with advice before the races and gave feedback to all swimmers after their races. In some instances it was simply a case of going out too fast initially and then tiring before the race was complete but these are things that come with practice and training and more long course gala experience.
We had a good number of personal best times and we also had swimmers who achieved the much sought-after qualifying times for either Div2 galas or the Ulster Age Group galas. This shows the dedication to training is paying off for our swimmers. Well done to you all.
We had great success in the relays over the weekend. Our swimmers had teams in both the medley, freestyle, mixed medley and mixed freestyle relays. In the mens 17+ medley relay we had Adam, Marwin, Darragh and Ben (the latter two swimming up an age group). This team finished in 2nd place behind a very fast Banbridge team. In the ladies 17+ medley relay we had Aoibhín, Maddie, Rebekah (all swimming up an age group) and Hannah performing very well to finish in 4th place. In the ladies 13-16 medley relay, our team of Aoibhín, Maddie, Rebekah and Caoimhe swam well to finish in a very respectable 4th position. Our 17+ mens freestyle relay team of Adam and Marwin with Darragh and Seán G (swimming up) finished in a great 2nd place behind Banbridge in a time of 1.51.68.
In the mixed medley relay 17+ we had two teams entered – Team A comprising of Colin, Aoibhín, Rebekah and Darragh finishing in 2nd place and Team B comprising of Adam, Maddie, Caoimhe and Marwin who finished in 3rd place. Great excitement with our teams swimming against eachother!
As the second day of the gala took place on Mothers Day, our swimming mums were gifted a box of chocolates from Swim Ulster which was a lovely gesture. We hope all the mums had a great day.