On the morning of Sunday December 9, over a hundred swimmers from all over Southern NSW gathered at the Goulburn Aquatic Centre to take part in the Goulburn Swimming Club’s annual development meet.
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Although the meet was not as heavily attended as it normally was, with only 107 swimmers in attendance as opposed to the usual numbers which can reach up to 200, local coach Brad Wild said that it was still a highly successful outing for all swimmers who attended the event.
“Very small numbers in comparison to what we’ve had in previous years, but very successful,” Wild said in summary of the day.
“The Goulburn swimmers in particular, there were a lot of really large personal bests from the event, so from a club point of view with the performance of the swimmers, we were very, very happy.”
The numbers were lower than usual in 2018 due to busy end-of-year schedules from Swimming ACT and Swimming NSW, which West said was unusual.
“This year we had State Open Championships happen down in Sydney on the same weekend, plus there was a country and state qualifying meet the weekend before, so a lot of swimmers would have been recovering from that,” he said.
While it was a fruitful trip for the swimmers who attended the meet, it also provided officials a good chance to do some training.
“We had a couple of trainee officials also, one of them being one of our senior swimmers,” Wild said.
“They decided he wanted to start giving back to the sport, so for the development meet he … was actually the starter for the event. So he went and did all his theory qualifications and so forth and is now doing the mandatory hours to be signed off.
“From a club point of view, for us to be able to use the event as training for young officials … and still run the event as successfully as we did, we were very happy.”
The development meet also kicked off a busy period for the Goulburn Swimming Club, with another development meet set for January in the ACT, and club member Emily Weston is set to compete in the Age State Championships in Sydney from December 14 to December 19, in the 100 and 200 meter backstroke.
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