Whilst there may have been a shortage of caffeine available at 7am last Saturday morning in Swan Leisure, the sight of Vlad in his electric blue budgy smugglers was enough to wake even the sleepiest parent!
As kids and parents alike happily trooped into Rathmines for this particularly early start, there was a decidedly festive air. A couple of the more organised parents even had Christmas pudding swim hats!
The Pre-Club members had a unique opportunity to take part in some 25m races and did themselves proud. Some anxious little faces soon turned to triumphant grins by the end of their inaugural swim gala length! What a great finale to the year of hard training for our youngest members.
The gala went from strength to strength with all of the swimmers enjoying the novelty of parental participation. We thought perhaps we might have to get out the defibrillator after one or two particularly strenuous performances, but in the end, the most serious diagnosis was one of Bruised Ego.
Vlad used his commanding skills of organisation to somehow transform a screaming, shivering mass of confused swimmers into a relay event worthy of Tokyo 2020, at which point the decibels hit such heights at the final lengths we genuinely worried for the glass rooflights.
So great was the craic being had, that the only way we could get the kids out of the pool was with promise of treats upstairs where an amazing spread awaited including freshly baked scones and pastries no less.
There followed the prize giving where we even had the benefit of podiums (aka steppers). The winners are too numerous to mention except the mention the swimmers of the year who were as follows ;-
Pre Club – Niamh MacGuinness
Junior Development squad – Joe McNamara
Junior squad – John Slattery
Development squad – Ruby Carney
Senior squad – Lucy O’Donnell
Well done to all the worthy winners and all who took part to make such a wonderful and memorable morning.
