Southern Junior League kicked off on Saturday 9th June. The league consists of 25 teams from throughout the South West Region. As there is no 25 lane pool available, the event is swum as separate galas with all the times recorded and the results worked out afterwards with the team recording the fastest time awarded 25 points and the slowest 1 point.

We were swimming at Swindon Link Centre against Swindon Dolphin A, Cirencester and Bassett JSK (from Southampton). Some great performances on the night with our best result coming from the 9-year-old boys who managed to finish 4th in the medley relay event, well done Zac Abrey, Seth Moore, Oscar Symons and Seb Scutt. Due to a false start, the boys 9 years 50m freestyle was swum twice, Oscar Symons did not seem affected by this and got the team 20 points recording 6th place overall. Another of our 9-year-old boys, Seb Scutt came 8th in the 50m backstroke. These boys had started the evening with a great result of 8th in the 4 x 25m freestyle.
Enough with the 9-year-old boys….
Our 9 years girls (Jessica Howie, Lily Miles, Niamh McNamara, Felicity Lovelock Blair) finished 16th in the freestyle relay. Jessica Howie was placed 7th overall in the 9-year-old girls 50m breaststroke.
Representing the club for 10-year-old boys were George Hart, Ashton Brooks, Finley Goodheart and Jack Jones. Ashton swam well in the 50m butterfly achieving 14th place.
Ava Kayani was 13th in the 10-year-old girls 50m freestyle. Our other 10 years girls were Ella Spencer, Flo Williams, Naila Hidouci, Beth Sullivan, Scarlett Allen and Cody Durrant.
11 years boys were Rhys Brooke, Oliver Rowlands and Samuel Morris, with Ashton Brooks swimming up in the relays. Great result of 15th in the 4 x 25m free.
11 years girls were Maddie Williams, Madi Bindon, Abigail Garland, Molly Checchia, Alex Scutt and Freya Howie which sounds like a lot of girls, but as we now only have one 12-year-old girl (Verity Pocock) many of them spent the evening swimming up an age group.
Not so the 12-year-old boys, there are four of them Harry Carpenter, Kyle Nicholson, Max Sullivan and Jacob McNamara. Best result from them was 10th in the 50m butterfly from Max.

With all the results tallied up, we are currently in 21st place, which is about where we expected to be. We entered the league to give our younger swimmers the opportunity to swim in a competitive environment and have some fun with their friends from swimming.

A big thank you to our hosts on the evening – Swindon Dolphins, the officials and all the helpers. Thank you to the parents for supporting the event and a big well done to all the swimmers.

And the most amazing thing happened before we even got in the pool. The team photo, the very first photo taken has everybody looking at the camera with their eyes open!