Saturday was the first round of London League, and our team did some amazing swims. The meet ended with us smashing the 8x50m squadron, and winning this round overall. Of course, there’s always room for improvement, so let’s strive to do even better at Round 2!
Here are some beautiful shots of our beautiful team:
Our men’s captain looking pensive…
And our swimmers getting in the zone…
This weekend members of UCLUSC’s competitive squad took part in the BUCS short course swimming championships at Sheffield.
We started off the meet very strongly on Friday night, with Alan Li setting a new club record for the 1500m freestyle, and Sam Dallimore breaking the 50m freestyle club record with a time of 23.64 in the men’s freestyle relay.
And of course, day one ended with a meal at Wagamamas…
On Saturday (day two), we broke four more club records, including the 50m breaststroke by Jj Choron (29.28), whose time qualified him for the finals! This is the first time a UCL swimmer has made the finals, so big congratulations!!
Finally, on the last day although we were all tired from two days of intense racing, we still managed to do some amazing swims. Overall, our team broke 8 club records and set 4 new ones.
The club record breakers/setters for this meet include: Acorn Lau (400IM, 200fly and 400fr), Jj Choron (50br and 100fr), Jacquelyn Yang (100fr and 200IM), Sam Dallimore (50fr), Rob Hilton (200IM), Alan Li (1500fr), Lara Cosford (50fr), and Mohamed Hammad (200br). Massive well done to everyone who competed, bring it on London League!
In support of the This Girl Can Campaign developed by Sport England we decided to run our own event as part of UCLU Swimming. We wanted to encourage and celebrate all the active women at UCL by showing them what we (the girls in the club do) and what they can achieve.
And to make things really fun and to show off just how tough we are, we decided to hire two lanes at the London Fields Lido Pool! (Yes…the outdoor “heated” one)
Taking charge of the lanes we created a training set for the girls to follow. We watched the girls at first and offered advise wherever we could. All the girls had very different backgrounds in swimming, and it was really great seeing how little changes in their stroke techniques made a really big splash in developing their swimming styles.
And as we can see the effort really paid off!
They were only smiles here…
Until Jackie said…
“Butterfly”
Thankfully Lara was there to save the day
Because after all THIS GIRL CAN !
After 200m of butterfly that many girls had never even imagined being able to do, we thought it was time to end the session by showing the girls just how fun swimming can really be:
Team Relays…wheelbarrow edition! Essentially holding onto the back of someone else while swimming freestyle. It’s more fun than it sounds.
Overall it was a huge success!
And although, the day started off on a bit of a rough note, given it was November 10th and we don’t live in the Caribbean.
We did end up having a turn up of 15 girls who proudly and relecutantly helped me hold the banner up in the end. It was clear they were itching to get back into the water for more training, although some may argue the warmth of the pool could have played a factor in their enthusiasm.
Thank you everyone for coming and making it such a wonderful experience. Given the smiles on your faces I can only assume you had as much fun as we did. Special shout outs to our club’s advisor Laura-Jane Elizabeth White for helping organise the event and to the two girls: Jacquelyn Yang our Women’s Competitive Captain and Lara Cosford one of our star competitive members for their efforts in making this event flow as swimmingly as it did.
Remember, This Girl Can
UCL Swimming Club 