Winsford Swimming Club

Where to start… just wow! The most exciting Arena League I’ve ever been to as a coach or swimmer. Historically Premier League has always been hard for us, we know racing the best teams in the North West is a challenge and to even be in the Premier League is an honour. Making the A final this year was our aim guaranteeing us top 8 in the NW. Draw 1 came out and we thought. "Oh wow!" When we saw 6/8 of last year's A finalist were in our first round, we knew we had our work cut out, and it was going to make our chances of that A final difficult! We knew last night was basically like the A final and we had to perform to our absolute best, no room for errors.

We had a strong team talk before the competition got going and everyone was fired up ready to go! Race after race we performed, PBs everywhere, fantastic splits, much improved skills, starts and turns across the board were noticeable & the team morale and ethos was out of this world! We were by far the loudest and most decorated club there, orange tattoos, tutus, face paint, crocs, glasses, scrunchies we had the absolute lot and looked the real business!! When Ali kindly read out the first points announcement we looked at each other in disbelief that we were winning and this happened again and again… kindly pointed out by Will Murray ‘Don’t these teams always beat us?’ Yes Will! Yes they do! What was happening?!

After 51 Fierce races we managed to come out on top breaking the 300 points mark and WIN!

Results were
1ST WINSFORD 303
2nd Wigan Best 279
3rd Stockport Metro 265
4th City of Salford 247
5th Trafford Metro 238
6th Satellites 213
7th Altrincham 145
8th Southport 144

History making. We have never beaten the big metro clubs in the NW before. With Stockport, Wigan Best, Liverpool or Salford winning every year since 1994. So this was HUGE. Winsford on the map.

Incredible First Places:

Huge thank you to Andy Jones for his incredible support and coaching behind the block, you’ve been a monumental addition to our coaching team & we love working with you! To Nickie Ma for officiating, but also for her continued amazing work leading our mornings, you play a huge part in this success as well. Thank you Jackie Schillinger for officiating. To Dani, Sue & John for your team management. To Adam Blackburn who came to cheer on! To Dani, again, who spent hours on end these past few weeks doing the admin for all this, there’s a lot that goes on in the background submitting a team that many of you probably aren’t aware just how much. So huge thank you & to Matt Pearce who kindly helped Dani sit in the pool store for 2 hours typing ASA after ASA number onto the arena league system in preparation so today could happen. Thank you Ali Ross for being a fantastic announcer, even more special it was a Winsford’s own getting to see those results first and read them out!

To my bestie and partner in crime Izzy where we sat for probably the duration of 4 hours picking and mathematically working out the best combinations for the teams to be as successful as they were & leading an incredible B team performance!!

Special thank you to Carys Roberts, Johnny Mullett, Ethan Wright, Lewis Turner & Connor McVicar who came back from University specifically, you were amazing and we absolutely loved having you back!

Parents amazing cheering and huge thumbs up for all the orange tops on the balcony, it was brilliant to be able to see and hear you all, more of that for the next round!

We move onto North Mids next weekend and need to get our heads down in preparation for our next round in 4 weeks time! We hope to hear about the draws soon so will update you asap!! Make sure you keep Sat 9th November free where we go again!!!

Huge congratulations!! Little celebration Sunday

Thanks

Molly