Term 1
The year started well for the club with 165 people signing up for more information at Freshers’ Fair on Thursday 24th and Friday 25th September that is double the amount that did the previous year indicating the increased awareness of the club on campus, which can only be positive for the club. The first social of the year was on Saturday 26th September, and was a great chance for potential members to meet the committee and the rest of the club before the first session. The social started with pre-drinks and games at the Gowar and Wedderburn common room before moving onto Medicine for Antidote. The first two sessions of the term the following week went well and the enthusiasm and interest for the club was managed well with a first come first served policy at the bus stop to ensure we did not exceed the limit of thirty people, the pool’s capacity, which had been a problem at the start of last year and had put off potential members.
The second social of the year, on Wednesday 30th September, was a three legged pub crawl and was a very enjoyable and competitive evening as pairs raced from pub to pub beginning in Stumble Inn and finishing at the Student Union. The third social of the year, a fancy dress Cave Rave night, on Wednesday 7th October was another fun evening, which started in the Happy Man with a complementary barbeque and drinks deals before moving onto the union.
Time trials were held on Tuesday 6th and 13th October. These allowed everyone, who wanted to, to get times, and provided an opportunity for competitive swimmers to get up-to-date times ahead of the Short Course Championships in November.
The biggest social of the year so far was Come in Your Kit Night on Wednesday 14th October. The social began in the Gowar and Wedderburn common room with drinks and games, including a few rounds of Twisters one of which Will accidently recorded on his phone, before moving onto the union. Members showed their usually spirit and come just in their swimming stuff and as usual the marker pens, not permanent this time, were at the ready.
The next event of the term was the Club photo on Saturday 8th November. Although there was a poor turnout due to it being reading week and the weekend, this was still a nice memento of the year for those loyal members who turned up. Short Courseheld up in Sheffield on the weekend of the 13th -15th November went well for the team. On Tuesday 24th November we did our bit for RAG and posed for the Naked Calendar. Check us out in the July slot or if you can’t wait Facebook.
Arguably the most important event of the term, at least
for the competitive side of the club, was the Southern Qualifying Round for the Team Championship held at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield on Sunday 29th November. This was a very successful day for the club with the team qualifying comfortably third in Division 3 with 142 points. An improvement on last year when we narrowly qualified fourth.
The final social of the term was the Christmas meal on Thursday 3rd December at The Crown in Egham followed by a trip to Liquid in Windsor. This was a great evening and a great way to round off the year. The last event of the term was volunteering at Santa Workshop on the last Wednesday of term, 10th December.
Term 2
After an interrupted start to training with St John 's Beaumount swimming pool being closed due to a broken pump from the second session of term, a number of cancelled session and having two sessions of public swimming at Spelthorne Leisure Centre in Staines, the only highlight of which was seeing Flic doing aqua aerobics, we are back to training hard at St John's in preparation for Long Course and Team Championships.
The team had a very successful Long Course on the weekend of 12th- 14th February with personal bests on long course times for all swimmers. Jess Meteau swam against Jo Jackson, Olympic Bronze medallist in 400m freestyle at Beijing, in one of her race. Party rings, endless arguing between Jonny and Ceri and a controversial scoreboard revision which saw Jonny beating Dan all made for a great weekend. The team were even filmed by the BUCS TV crew because our club’s story of a small club with no coach who only began competing three years ago was a ‘good story’.
Come in Your Kit 2 on Wednesday 24th February was a great night as always. We started the night in Crosslands, then had a slightly freezing walk to the union before partying the night away. We had the usual array of multi-coloured fish and one sextapus, and Claire sported the usual badly drawn picture of the Titanic courtesy of Alex. Not that Alex was going any better with his marker pen googles. For once Will didn’t just arrive in his trunks and googles, but stripped off into his kit as the evening progressed like the rest of us. The advantage of this was that his girlfriend then came to pick up his layers and also took Alex’s and Jonny’s so that they also had no choice but to brave the cold.
Elections for next year's committee took place on Thursday 4th March. Congratulation to Jonny Brankin (President),
Claire Trenery (Vice President), Louis Mech (Secretary), Dan Costen (Treasurer) Alex Wahnon (Men's Captain) and Rebecca Kearney (Ladies' Captain). After the elections the new and current committee went for a meal at the Harvester to celebrate.
On Friday 12th March the team travelled up to Sheffield in a minibus with the judo team. It was a fun filled journey with Jonny, the tallest member of the team, choosing the seat with the least leg and subsequently getting stuck when crossing his legs, several memorable quotes from Alex and Becca and Alex playing yellow car. When we finally arrived in Sheffield we went out for a team meal at Pizza Hut. On Saturday 13th March after a delayed warmup and start the competition finally began at 1.15pm. The most memorable race of the day was the girls’ 200m freestyle relay where a polo ball flew into the lane in the middle of the race. It was a successful day with the team being promoted to Division 2 after finishing in the top three Southern teams in the Finals and the club gaining our first BUCS point for finishing eighth overall in Division 3. This is a great achievement because this is only the club's third year of competition. Spirits were momentarily dampened when Alex thought he had lost his wallet as we were about to leave and even cancelled his cards only to find it was in his bag all along. On the way home Becca won the yellow car competition and Jonny set his phone to send Claire frequent texts saying ‘Shut up’ all day every day until he decide to turn it off. Her inbox is currently full and she has to turn her phone off at night to sleep. You'll be please to know Jonny has now stopped.
On Tuesday 16th March the swimming club did its sponsored Swim the Channel event to raise money for Right to Play. The aim was to swim 1352 lengths or 21 miles the equivalent of the length of the Channel at the Strait of Dover in one hour. The fourteen swimmers who took part exceeded this goal by 100 lengths. Thank you to everyone who swam, all the counters and everyone who sponsor us. We raised £396.59 for Right to Play. .
On Saturday 20th March the swimming club finally attended Colours Ball. For once it did clash with BUCS Team Championship Finals in Sheffield. After waiting in the rain for the coaches or in the girls’ case in Claire’s mum’s car we finally set off to the Renaissance Hotel in Heathrow. The evening began with a champagne reception and live music from 'Undergraduated' , the Royal Holloway big band, and after this we got a professional photograph done. For the meal we shared a table with Cross Country and Riding and enjoyed a mushroom frittata sans mushroom for starter, a supreme of chicken with dauphnoise potatoes and seasonal vegetable possibly cauliflower for main and for dessert a chocolate mousse plus of course plenty of wine.Congratulations to Claire Trenery and Rebecca Kearney for receiving Half Colours and to Katie Barke for finally being awarded her Crest from last year. Commiserations to all the nominees who didn’t receive an award and better luck next year.
Term 3
In the final term the club retained just one session a week on Mondays. The main event of the term was Club Championships, which took place on Monday 24th May, Tuesday 1st June and 7th June, The victors were Ben Smith and Rebecca Kearney. The only other event of the term was Committee Training on Friday 28th May. On the final session on Monday 7th June the club said goodbye to four members: Flic Elliott, Katie Barke, Will Burridge and Ben Smith who have all been dedicated members of the club throughout their degrees and have all been on the committee.
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