2015 Broken Hill 2 Day Carnival Wrap

Broken Hill 2 Day Swimming Carnival 2015

The Broken Hill 2 day swimming carnival was held on the weekend in cool blustery conditions but that did not stop the competitors and spectators enjoying the weekend’s events. Competitors and entries were up on last year’s event with the three local clubs competing and teams making the trip over from Swan Hill, Adelaide, Cobar and the Sunraysia region.

 

Images supplied by Powell Images

 The carnival was well supported by the gold sponsors, AGL, The Demo Club, MCA Engineering, YMCA Broken Hill and Radio 2BH 567. Without these sponsors continued support events like this would not be able to continue. A big thank you goes out to Damien Fisher at 2BH for his advertising prior to the event and his live broadcasting from poolside on both days. Broken Hill Aquatic have received positive feedback from far and wide about the quality of the broadcast.

Again this year we had great support from our individual feature event sponsors, The Gateway Motor Inn, Gardiner Hall & Co. Accountants, Southstate Industrial Supplies, McDonalds, Alfresco’s Café and the Southern Cross Hotel. These sponsors enabled us to award the competitors for their outstanding achievements throughout the carnival.

  

New to the carnival this year was the inclusion of the Ready Set Race event, held during the mid-session break on Saturday. Ready Set Race! Is designed to give participants a fun introduction to competitive swimming in a welcoming, safe and encouraging environment. The program is designed for children aged 5 - 12 who have the ability to swim 25m or 50m and have an interest in developing their swimming skills and joining a swimming club. Eight young swimmers took the opportunity to participate in this event. They all were a little nervous to start with but once the first race was underway smiles as wide as the pool entrance appeared on their faces and they couldn’t wait until the next heat. Overall it was a great success and the swimmers really enjoyed themselves.

The carnival weekend started on Friday night for the Broken Hill Aquatic swimmers and families with a function held at the club rooms to welcome the new members to the club and also vote for the male and female club captains and vice-captains for the 2015/16 swimming season. This year’s male captain is Tobias Thomas, male vice-captain Harry Campbell, female captain Georgie Kuerschner and female vice-captain Savannah Morris. Congratulations to these club leaders.

 

  

The Broken Hill Aquatic Stingrays were represented by 26 swimmers at the carnival and all swimmers put in an outstanding effort individually and as a team. Our youngest swimmer was Archie King 6 years old and our oldest swimmer was Isabella Morris 19 years old. The team won an incredible number of individual medals as well as several relay ribbons, they should be very proud of their achievements.

A special mention must go out to volunteers that helped make this carnival a great success. Thank you for donating your time all weekend. To head Coach Steven Moore, Steven has done a great job preparing the swimmers for a carnival so early in the swimming season and to be able to achieve such great results was fantastic.

 

Broken Hill Aquatic’s under 10 group of swimmers, Jet Collins, Madelaine Baxter, Justin Cochrane-Adolfson, Archie King, Pranavan Rajeshkannan, Cooper Wellington and Genevieve Mafi all had a good weekend swimming their way to an amazing 45 personal best times. Genevieve won three gold and two bronze medals, Justin also won three gold, two silver and six bronze medals. Justin is only nine and he has set two state qualifying times in the 11 and under age group. A great reward for a young boy that always gives 110 percent. Jet Collins had a great swim in his 50m breaststroke picking up a gold and also a silver and bronze medal in his other events.

The next group of swimmers, Angus Baxter, Will Campbell, Cadell Collins, Riley King, Jayden Parker, Maighan Mashford, Jade Scott, Sienna Speechley and Deaken Treloar all had a good weekend with some great solid swims. The standouts of this group were Sienna Speechley who picked up five gold, five silver and one bronze medal. She also swam 12 personal best times and qualified for the state championship in every event she swam in. Will Campbell won three gold and three silver medals and swam five personal best times, a good result for a swimmer that has had mixed results in the lead up to the carnival. Deaken Treloar has only been swimming with the club for a short time and he showed on the weekend that he too can mix it with the best swimmers in the region. He won one gold, one silver and one bronze and swam seven personal best times. Well done to this group of swimmers. 

Our 14 years and above group of swimmers were represented by, Angus Bartlett, Harry Campbell, Jesse Cochrane-Adolfson, Rohan Cutting, Georgie Kuerschner, Isabella Morris, Savannah Morris, Zac Murray, Zayden Speechley and Tobias Thomas all contributed to the large hall of medals making the Broken Hill Aquatic team the standout team of the weekend. Jesse Cochrane-Adolfson was the most successful out of the group winning 9 gold, 4 silver and one bronze medal. Jesse competed in a massive 14 events and qualified for the state championships in every event. Jesse also took out the Bill O’Neil trophy for the most outstanding senior male swimmer for the second year in a row. Rohan Cutting won five gold and two silver medals on his way to qualifying for the state championships. Savannah Morris also won five gold, two silver medals and Georgie Kuerschner won two gold, three silver and three bronze medals. Isabella Morris held up all day with work commitments came down late on Saturday to catch a couple of 50m events which she powered away in both to take gold easily.

 

The BHA swimmers also combined for the medley and freestyle relays competing in 16 relays and winning 8, finishing second in two and third in four. The girl’s teams were unbeaten all weekend, an outstanding effort by all that competed.

After the carnival the team relaxed with a dinner at the Demo Club and this was a good evening that topped off a wonderful weekend. At the dinner Madelaine Baxter was presented with the President’s award. The President’s Award is presented by the BHA Stingray’s Club President. The president’s award not only recognises individual results, but also how the recipient supports other team members and how they demonstrate the clubs values and participate in fair play. Congratulations Madelaine.

The BHA team are now back training hard for the next carnival on the calendar in Port Augusta, which includes an open water swim on the Sunday. I wish the team good luck for the rest of the summer season.