On what was a very long day for all our swimmers and helpers due to running two carnivals on the same day, Merrylands swimmers excelled and our club’s wonderful team culture was on display yet again.
The swimmers warmed up with coaches Alison and Katie before getting stuck into their races and achieving some wonderful results. Club Captain Michael was the first to swim and started the club off with the first PB of the day in the 200IM, one of many PBs to come!
Our 50m Breaststrokers achieved 11 Personal Best times, with our Speedo Finalist Unish bagging a gold medal to start our medal tally off with a bang! Matt achieved a bronze whilst Hayley and Peter raced away with gold medals and both set the record for the 17 & Over age group due to it being a new event.
Next up were our 100m Butterfliers with Matt swimming 2 PBs in the one event: a new 50m PB at the turn and a 100m PB at the finish, while also gaining himself another State qualifying time. Another 2 PBs followed in this event, backed all the way by the cheering of our team.
Our 50m Backstrokers continued on in fine form with medals galore. Matt and Alison gained silver and Joab, Michael and Hayley achieved bronze medals. 6 more PBs were added to the tally.
Our 100m Breaststrokers continued to drop times with 5 PBs dropping more than 30 seconds between them!
The 50m Freestyle was hotly contested with Joab swimming a PB to earn himself a gold medal. Matt and Alison also earned gold with Alison setting the 17 & Over Record (to one day be beaten by one of her squad members). Summer bagged herself a silver in a close finish and Hayley added to her stash with a bronze. 10 PBs were achieved during this event.
3 more PBs were achieved in the 100m Backstroke, with Sophia smashing her time (to just outswim her brother and have bragging rights for another day) and Bree taking a tidy 8 seconds off her time.
Merrylands had 20 swimmers in the 100m Freestyle and 7 more PBs were achieved! Elie smashed his time taking 9 seconds off his previous mark.
The end was in sight but not before the 50m fly was contested. Matt achieved his second 50m fly PB for the day and added to his gold medals. Sophia and Alison picked up more silver bling and Hayley and Michael added to their stash with bronze. 3 PBs were achieved in the process.
The last events of the day were the hotly contested relays!
In the 10 & Under Relay, Unish, Lisa, Joab and Niushka combined forces to pick up silver medals.
The 12 & Under Relay team of Summer, Nevah, Helen and Matt were in a tight finish and achieved bronze.
Congratulations to all our swimmers on the results from the meet. Together we achieved 50 new personal best times, 7 gold medals, 6 silver and 8 bronze. Thank you to everyone who attended the meet and to all the members of our club and other volunteers who worked at the meet, we couldn't have run it without you and you did an amazing job. The results of the meet are now available in the SwimFest section of our website.