March News Roundup

03 Mar 2025

Club Records

2024 was a pretty impressive year for club records with several long term records being broken, Jacob S took the 11 year old boys 100,200 breast and 100 back short course and 50,100,200 breast and 50 fly long course. Harry C broke the club record 12 year old boys 50/100 breast long course and in doing so ranked #1 (12 years boys) in the UK for the 50 breast long course for 2024! The club welcomed back Martha B to the performance squad this year and she took the club record for 50 fly at the West Midlands Championships.

Long course training / C&D relay gala

At the start of the year Sharks had a couple of training sessions at Alan Higgs, one for everyone in Juniors up. A second through our membership of the C&Ds where the swimmers with county times got a session with coach of Derby Excel John Ayde who brough down UK National Championship swimmer Imogen Clarke to do all the demos. As part of the day there is always the long course relay gala in the evening which gives a big team of 48 swimmers the chance to have a go at swimming in the Coventry pool the full 50m length. Sharks were competitive in every relay, with some excellent swims, most noticeably Peter Dawes coming back out of retirement to clock 25 seconds for 50m free, and he still managed to fit into his junior league t-shirt from 20 years ago !

Warwickshire Championships

Sharks had 37 swimmers who qualified for counties this year, which is always a good achievement as the times are very fast. It as also a very successful event in terms of PBs swam and overall results. We had our biggest haul of medals for some considerable time with lots of finals made and numerous places down to 8th. The medal winners are below.

  • Martha B (2nd 50 fly)
  • Harry C (2nd 50 breast,3rd 100 breast)
  • Jacob S (3rd 50 Free 3rd 200IM 3rd 200 Breast)
  • Isla T (3rd 50 Back)
  • Evangeline H (3rd 50 fly)
  • Izzy G (1st 50 Back)
  • Arabella P(3rd 200 fly)

Harry C (50 breast,100 breast ) and Jacob S (200 breast, 100 fly) broke yet more club records for the start of 2025.

The Jim

The infamous Junior Invitational Meet is always the first open event of the year where swimmers from 8 upwards can take part and get times for all the sprint events. This is a great opportunity for the younger academy swimmers to put into practice all the skills they work in training in a proper gala. There were lots of great swims and everyone should be really happy with their achievements, from getting medals, competing in your first gala or getting through an event legally. Special thanks to all the parents who stepped in to help out.

There were lots of medals and some great first swims, it was good to see so many new swimmers going.

Everyone who took part got a medal and there were also loads of individual awards

  • Lily W (3rd 100IM, 3rd 25 fly, 3rd 25 back)
  • Grace M (2nd 100IM, 3rd 50 fly)
  • Max B (3rd 100IM, 2nd 25 breast)
  • Harrison G(3rd 100IM, 2rd 50 breast, 3rd 50 back)
  • Thomas Graham (1st 100IM, 1st 50 breast, 1st 50 back, 3rd 50 free)
  • Immy W (1st 25 breast, 3rd 25 fly)
  • Hollie E (2nd 25 breast)
  • Dylan W (2nd 25 breast, 2nd 25 fly,3rd 25 free)
  • Sammy W (3rd 25 breast, 3rd 25 back)
  • Harry H(2nd 25 back, 2nd 25 free)

Ginger North Relay Gala

This was held at Leamington, Saturday 1st March and Sharks took a team featuring a lot of new swimmers to team events. We were up against Leamington, Nuneaton, Rugby and City of Cov. There was a great team spirit poolside. Everyone swam brilliantly and contributed to an impressive 3rd place. There were big smiles at the end when the swimmers collected their bronze medals.

Club Captains

The Club Captains for this year in the seniors are:-

Club Captains – Ben R & Cassie L
Vice Captains – Rebecca M & Oliver S

Stratford Sharks Mike Wardle Sprints

The date for this years Mike Wardle's Sprints is 28th June, the pool is booked at Redditch and the licence has been applied for. For those of you new this is a sprint gala across all strokes + 100IM. The age groups for this year will be 8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15+ and we have medals / ribbons at least down to 8th.
There will be limited places as we do only have 3 hours of pool time. We also need an army of volunteers/officials to help make the event run.
Anyone new who would like to help out please just reply to this email.

Upcoming events

  • 7th March Academy Time Trial (all bronze, silver and gold swimmers you are welcome to come along 6:30-7:30 Stratford)
  • 15/16 March City of Coventry John Hughes
  • 5 April Junior league round 1 (team selection emails go out early March)
  • 26th April Mercian Round 1 (team selection mid march)
  • 17/18 May C&Ds May Open Meet (event entries out to everyone 9+ April)
  • 28th June MIKE WARDLE SPRINTS (put it in your diary ! Invites April)

All events are listed on the competition planner.

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