Another noisey and exciting night of swimming, this time at our own pool. Once again the tight timebands were a challenge to all of the clubs but lots of points were scored throughout the evening. This time we had joint top ponts scorers, Lucy and Stuart both scoring 20 points and they were closely followed by Anna Scott with 19 and then Liall with 15.
There were also loads of great PBs, with lots of improvements in the fly - Bethany (11.5 secs), Kenzie (8.11), Anna C (5.54), Stuart (5.31), Liall (4.37) and Eilidh (4.10). The backstroke improvements were Lucy (4.39), Anna S (2.03) and Joanne (1.86). In the breaststroke, Betheny reduced ber previous best by a staggering 23 secs, with Kenzie improving by 5 secs and Isobel by 4.1. Finally, the improvements in the free were led by Eilidh (3.25 secs), Isobel (2.74), Anna S (1.75) and Stuart (1.43).
Haddington had a very good night and have overtaken us to lead the league. However, at the halfway point the league is extremely close so its all to play for in the new year.
With 33 swimmers competing in individual finals and another 7 competing in relays, there were lots of Porty caps on show tonight. 7 golds, 8 silvers and 6 bronzes was a tremendous result and when you add in the relays there were another 8 gold medals (including all 4 swimmers in the Portobello High School 12/13 boys team).
Rory W was a triple gold medalist winning both the 100m + 200m free and the relay, Gavin won 2 golds and a silver, both Rory M and Raquel won two golds each, Will won two golds and a silver and Callum, James + Rachel won a gold and a silver each. Chris won the under 12 boys 50m back and Nieve won the girls event, with Ellie G taking an excellent bronze at the tender age of 9. The Duddingston girls relay team was another all Porty squad and they had the very vocal group of supporters (not just Maureen this time) yelling them home to take the bronze.
So that’s a total of 31 individual medals at this year’s Schools event including 12 Edinburgh champions and we now wait to hear how many of that total are accepted for the Scottish Schools finals in Jan.
After a huge amount of hard work by lots of people led by meet director Mike Johnston, we ran our first ever long course event. It had attracted a huge entry from all over Scotland (and the north of England) and included two Beijing Olympians in the programme. The overall club trophy was won by City of Glasgow who also won the boys club award. Garioch won the girls trophy and the individual best boy/girl trophies were won by a variety of clubs including our own Raquel in the 12yrs category.
Raquel also broke three EAST DISTRICT records in three different strokes (50m fly, 50m free and 100m back) and won our biggest collection of medals with 2 golds, 4 silvers and a bronze as well as two relay silvers. Gillian took our other gold in the 50m breast and Chris collected 4 silvers and a bronze. Ciaran was back after a long break with a knee problem and he took 3 silvers in his three events. Niall swam yet another PB to take silver in the 100m fly with a top ten UK time. In fact, its worth a look at the ASA site to see how many swimmers achieved British Nationals qualifying times at our meet.
Many, many thanks to everyone involved in the success of this meet which involved so many people throughout the Club.
A smaller team than last year but they performed very well. Carys and Emma H swam in the morning session with Carys reaching the final of the 50m back and just missing the breast final. Emma also missed the fly and the free finals by just one place.
In the afternoon, some of the victorious team from Peebles were swimming again with Chris winning a gold, 2 silvers and a bronze whilst Keri took a gold and 2 silvers and Benji won a gold. Those three plus Nieve won the gold in the freestyle relay too.
Some of our younger swimmers attended Peebles’ “Stars of The Future” gala and had a terrific afternoon. Our aim was to retain the trophy that Portobello won at this meet in 2006 and 2007. A “hat-trick” of wins was by no means guaranteed and the afternoon delivered more than the usual level of tension as things played out.
Despite some convincing wins in individual events (incl. Chris McColm achieving a new meet record in the 11 years old boys backstroke event) only three points separated the top four teams as the relay session began.
With seven relay events on the programme it was impossible to predict. Noise levels soared as enthusiastic swimmers cheered on their teams, making for an exciting end to everyone’s afternoon. In addition to a number of valiant efforts, Portobello enjoyed a pair of firsts in the relays; our 11 year olds delivered resounding victories in the Mixed 11yr Freestyle and Medley 4 x 50 relays, one win was by about 40 metres!
At “full-time” wins were counted and points awarded. Amazingly, a three way tie between Portobello, Dunoon and Hearts was announced but that was not the end of it. Meet rules say that in the event of a tie, a tally of individual golds are used to decide the winning team. Portobello led with 12 golds to Dunoon’s 4 and Hearts were a close third. PORTY retained the cup !!!!!!
Many swimmers achieved PBs and as per the above overall result a substantial haul of medals were ours too, including 4 golds each for Keri, Kathryn and Chris, 2 golds each for Ellie, Benji and Rory G, 1 gold and a bronze for Ciara and a silver for Amy GV.
An excellent weekend to kick-off the East District Champs where (for the first time) we had two different swimmers winning medals in 200m/400m events.
On Saturday - Raquel swam the 400IM which was probably the most exciting race of the day with the lead changing three times throughout the race! She eventually took Silver. Raquel also swam the 200m Back and took Bronze Chris took Silver for 200m Free with a huge PB – 10 seconds!
On Sunday – Chris took Silver for 200m Breast again with huge PD – 13 seconds! and Benjamin came 4th. Lee had two fantastic swims in the 100m Free heat and final - he also got a huge PB finishing first and qualifying through to the final in March.
As many of us recovered from our Lanzarote trip, a small group spent the weekend in Dundee at this high calibre meet. Gillian and James both broke some PBs whilst Niall won two golds and 2 silvers with particularly impressive fly swims. Raquel had an exceptional meet, winning 5 golds, 2 silvers and a bronze and taking the Best Girl trophy.
4 years ago, Portobello ASC had only 9 swimmers competing in the heats of Edin Schools. This year, we had 45 Porty swimmers competing in the Schools heats and of those a fabulous 33 qualified for the Finals night. Well done coaches (and swimmers)!
There were many good PBs, the highlights of which were Ciara and Ellie both going under 40 secs in the 50m free (not bad for 9 yr olds), big improvements by Clare H and Will in the 200IM , a big reduction from Scott and Louise in the 200m free and best of all a new EAST DISTRICT record from Raquel in the 200m IM
The medals were settled on the day for the 200m events and we won 10 medals including 5 golds, 4 silvers and a bronze.
Whilst many of us were getting ready for out trip to Lanzarote for the training camp, Niall and Erin were both competing in this quality gala. Erin collected a bronze in the 50m free whilst Niall had a very productive day winning 4 golds, a silver and 2 bronzes and took home the Best Boy trophy.
A new competition between the 4 East Edin/Lothian clubs to give newer swimmers some competitive experience. Events were arranged into time bands and swimmers only scored points for the team if they swam within the timeband. So, although it looked like we had been beaten in many races we actually picked up good points as other teams’ swimmers were too fast in many cases.
Our top points scorers were Isobel + Rachel (22), Eilidh (20), Lucy (19), Anna Scott (18), Carys (17) and Lewis (15). Well done to the whole team and at the end of the first race night we are in the lead:
Portobello 179
Haddington 168
Tranent 146
Musselburgh 112