Redditch Swimming Club Finish The Year In Style!

 

Despite holding the club disco the previous day an enthusiastic group of swimmers and parents made the journey to Wolverhampton on December 6th for the inaugural Wyre Forest SC Xmas Relay Gala.

 

This great new event brought together the local clubs to celebrate the festive period and to mark the enthusiasm and support of the swimming community. Redditch were clearly up for the competition and started with a flurry of wins and continued in the same vein all evening eventually winning 18 of the 43 races. However the hosts were never far behind and it wasn’t until a tumultuous win in the final mixed cannon relay featuring 16 swimmers from each club that victory was assured.

 

Final Result

Redditch 200

Wyre Forest 193

Worcester 165

Droitwich Dolphins 152

Evesham 98

Pershore Penguins 67

 

 

Paul & Laura With the Trophy

 

The star shaped trophy was collected by Paul Wilkes and Laura Cranshaw. The RSC supporters also took the prize for a combination of noise, enthusiasm and colour co-ordinated “Redness” that even extended to eyeballs from the night before.

 

A week later saw the club in Bromsgrove in the final round of the National Swimming League. The mechanics of the draw system meant a tough contest against teams around us in the league and so it turned out with a close battle against local rivals Bromsgrove.

 

The team were led off by Laura Cranshaw and Paul Wilkes who won the first two events the 200m individual medleys. Laura later added wins in the open age breaststroke and freestyle and Paul won the open butterfly and was second in the breaststroke.

 

The open age swimmers added more success as Dan Ruckwood won the backstroke and freestyle and Rachael Fellows took second place in the butterfly.

 

15 year olds Lucy Knibbs(breaststroke)  and Rob Stanley(backstroke) were also winners and Rob also took second place in the freestyle.

 

13 year old Sophie Bridgman was first in butterfly and second in freestyle in her age group.

 

For the 11 year olds there were wins for Braiden Hartles in freestyle and Amelia Tompkin in breaststroke.

 

For once there were no relay wins but good competitive performances kept RSC well in the hunt and when it came to the last two events we were one point ahead of Bromsgrove. The penultimate event was the girls open freestyle relay and although RSC (Rachael Fellows, Suzie Britt, Emma Green, Sophie Bridgman, Bethany May and Laura Cranshaw) came a good second, Bromsgrove came first wiping out the Redditch lead. So the night came down to the boys open relay (Dan Ruckwood, Richard Fleeman, Rob Stanley, Gareth Ravenhill, Craig Newton and Paul Wilkes) and again Redditch were second. But this time Bromsgrove were third and after a tense wait for the final result Redditch were declared the winners and so should finish the campaign in 8^th place in the division – 3 better than last year.

 

Final result

1 Redditch 196

2 Bromsgrove 195

3 Boldmere B 182

4 Brierley Hill 175

5 Leighton Buzzard 149

6 City of Coventry B 147

 

This was the club’s third gala win in a row and fourth in 6 events. A tremendous achievement for all those involved.