COMMUNITY GAMES

The season never really stops for some of the TEAM.

A BIG congrats to Dayna Clegg, Alison O'Driscoll and Jonah Clegg who represented their local community games teams and the club at the National Community Games Finals in the last week. Dayna and Alison won their events in the Girls Under 12's events as Dayna collected gold in the Backcrawl and Alison collected Gold in the Freestyle. Not to be outdone Jonah Clegg finished 5th in the Boys Under 12 Backcrawl and, with a few years left to go in that age group, that's a great result for Jonah.

Well done to you all.

THE Olde Men!!! (LOL) of the SEA and a few RIVERS too!!

The Club just keep getting better and while some of you have taken the month off in August our "Masters" athletes continue to lead the way with some impressive results in the SEA.

While the rain came tumbling down all Summer Padraig Gray (1st - 16 swims/17 events) Gabby Byrne (9th - 13/17) Pat O'Driscoll, (36th - 9/17), David Hobson (61st - 10/17) Ian Kelly (185th - 4/17) and the Younger TEAMTSC members Daire O'Driscoll (131st - 5/17) Stephen Higgins (139th - 5/17), Michael Gray (170th - 4/17) have been particpating in the Mens section of the Open Sea Swims. There are a total of 370 men involved this season . Our girls too have been represented by Aoibheanna Hobson (109th - 4/15) and Niamh Bergin (141st - 2/15) with some 195 ladies taking part.

As of the 17 races held since the season started in June, Padraig Gray is leading the TOTAL Mens swimmer of the year at this moment with Gabby Byrne in 9th place overall. There are 370 Men who have taken part to date in the event series so it's a fantastic result to see the lads swimming so well. As a TEAM we are running 8th overall.

One of the most recent events saw the lads tackle a 5K in the sea and A MASSIVE Congrats to Daire, Gabby & Pat who swam same.

Keep up the good results and the best of luck for the Liffey Swim in the next week.

Great Swimmers - And Brains TOO !!!

BRAINIAC's in the POOl !!!

This is a short note of CONGRATULATIONS to the TEAMTSC members who had some fantastic Leaving Cert Results in the past 10 days. They all did themselves proud and have succesfully delivered results which have allowed ALL of them secure College places and their desired courses in the colleges of their choice.

Note to PARENTS:
At ALL levels in the club's history there are strong examples of our members achieveing not only high performance pool results but excellent academic results too. Year on Year we get great LC and JC results from the team.
The discipline, organisation and healthy lifestyles required to participate in an intensive training programme like ours allows the athletes acquire the skills and concentration to cope with their exams and the pressures of public exams. Largely speaking it is possible to continue to train through JC and LC school year and balance training, study and other activities and manage to perform across all areas. Please encourage your children to retain their involvement in the sport during these exam years as the benefits far outweigh the supposed additional studying (which invariably involves more time watching TV and updating BEBO!!).

Andrew Bree Qualifies for Beijing & other REALLY REALLY great Swimming Videos

Some of you might know that Andrew Bree has qualified for the Olympics in Beijing after a new Irish Senior Record in the Heats (2:13.44) and Finals (2:13.15) of the 200BS in the AMerican Nationals.

This is the link to video footage from the American Nationals where Andrew Bree qualified for the Olympic Games.
http://usaswimming.sportnet.com/index.php?stream=07_31

Fast forward to 01:03.30 to get to his final and see his swim. Also have a look at this link and the others on the page for other really good video footgae of American swimming.

Technically pay attention to the number of strokes per 50 they take, the quality of the underwater work off ALL the turns and also the pacing of their races.

I'd also ask you all to look at how FIT, ATHLETIC, STRONG and FLEXIBLE each and EVERY competitor here is. The Men and the Women are ALL fit, LEAN, FAST, FLEXIBLE and strong and they look it. YOU ALL need to do your dryland exercises, press ups and situps, flexibility and the other dryland circuit exercises that we have done all year and KEEP doing it EVERY day. Those of you with Therabands should also be using it daily to keep your shoulders strong.

See you all in a few weeks.

OH By the Way, Andy F, Ian and Stephen H have continued to train over August as Andy F is getting ready for the European Masters in Slovenia in 3 weeks. Well done lads for staying in shape and keep up the training.

All the Best with the Leaving Cert results next week too!!!!!

NATIONALS 2007 - The Real Results

I was well impressed this year with our Nationals TEAM performances. Across the board we swam PB after PB with over 59 PB's from 101 swims (That's all the heat swims and all the final and relay swims). There were a small number of medals this year but a couple of impressive results in Shane Faul's 200IM 3 second PB effort from Lane 8 and a fantastic 4 x 200FTR from the Men (Andy 2:01.1, Ian 1:58, Stephen 2:04, Shane 1:57) to get a great TEAM medal. There were also over 20 Top 8 finishes.

Ian Thom had a great meet with all 6 events he swam in getting to the 'A' final and demolishing his freestyle PB's in every distance he swam. Andy Farrell also demolished his freestyle PB's with some great swims. After cool Heat swims Shane Faul made finals and time and time again delivered some spectacular swims in the final swim with big PB's across his swims. Amy McSherry swam well and back to her best after her recent injury and continued as always to impress us in her swims. Laura Martin swam PB's in EVERYTHING also as she really finished the year in style with her most impressive set of swims this season. Ailish McLaughlin tabled a solid set of sprint swims to see her finish a strong year with good efforts. Niamh Murphy had a typically imressive set of performances but carrying a slight injury in to the middle of the meet she swam PB's and made some good finals with her most impressive swim being her win in the 'B' final of the 200IM. The Sterling performances from the Girls was Niamh Bergin's demolition of her PB's culminating in a 'B' final swim of 2:13.99 in the 200Free. Niamh swam a PB on the split of her 400 Heats (4:50, 2:20), followed that with another PB in the 400 Final (4:46, 2:18) and then swam a 2:15 in the heats of the 200 to finish with a 2:13.99 swim in the 'B' Final before she heads off to Greece for the European Youth Waterpolo Championships.

The Boys also swam well with Stephen Higgins posting PB's in everything, Dylan Farrell and Finbar McTiernan also knocking seconds of their more recent swims from LC Age Groups. Dylan's impressive 57. off the relay set a new standard in the 100Free for our boys and was matched by a 57 from Finbar and Stephen blasting through the sub 60 barrier and barely stopping at 59.1 (Also swimming 59.8 to his feet on the 200FC Relay). Finbar swam well in his favoured Backcrawl events making 'A' finals in his 100 and a 'B' final in the 200. We aere also graced witht he presence of Andrew Clarke and Sean Carey who made a Welcome return to the water and Cian Murphy who gave his 100Free one last go for the season.

Not to be outdone, Peter Sherry swam on Thursday and made the Semi's of the 100BF and showed the younger lads how to do it. A big thank you too to Helen Kelly and Eoghan Dillon who made the journey to Lisburn to show their support.

All in all it was a great finish to the season.

As always I'm extremely proud of this team and of the team that swam Age Groups. This volume of PB's at the end of the season makes all of your work worthwhile.

Next season WE GET BETTER, we WILL be FASTER and TOUGHER in both training and competition and will help to continue to build this TEAM up to being the strongest club team we can be.

Well done one and all on a 100% fantastic year.

Thank you all for your positivity, determination and smiles !!!

TOP 10 result in British Age Groups

TOP 10
10 Dayna CLEGG Ireland
100's (652), Form (619), Medley (599), Free (600), Total (2470)

What a great experience it must have been for Dayna to swim in the British Age Groups. While the rest of us were doing our best at the Nationals, Dayna was putting together a great set of swims in Ponds Forge Pool in Sheffield. On Day one Dayna made the 100BC final and swam close to her PB's in all of her other swims. This is a tough meet and only 70 athletes in the UK qualify for this meet as 11yr olds, but only 18 qualified to swim in all 4 event categories so Dayna has done very well to be the only girl from Ireland to compete in this age category. This meet scores athletes across their 4 best swims in the 100's, Form strokes, Medley events and a free style event. The average for each event is 600+ points with a 700 point swim being an outstanding result. The #1 swimmer got 2,700 points and only 18 swimmers qualified to score in all 4 events. Well done Dayna.

I think this level of competition is one of the toughest meets in the world for Age-Groups and with the 2012 Olympics being held in London then the British swimmers are really focused on getting geared up for this meet.

Well done Dayna, We're all well proud of you.