37 counties and approximately 1,000 swimmers merged onto Ponds Forge International Pool on Sunday 6th October. The atmosphere was electrifying.
With 36 of the 37 County Presidents, which included our own David Fortescue sitting on poolside the parade of the teams started. We saw the banner bearers with yellow hair, green hair, blue hair, tinseled garlands, and our own Freya Corbert dressed as a fairy and Josh Skinner showing us how to body pop the images on the big screen were greeted with enthusiasm.
We think our official Lisa Oyaide-Nicholls had an enlighted time on lane 7 helping time keep/judge in pool one and was lucky enough to judge our own Nottinghamshire swimmers on occasion. The scoreboard kept us all well informed of the scoring and who was on top and who was on the bottom of their group.
All the swimmers from our county swam to the best of their ability helping us keep in the Division One Pool for next year. Our coaches Nathan and Joe were pleased with everyone’s performances, Terry Taylor our swimming secretary was more than delighted with the swimmers’ behaviour both at the pool, in McDonald’s halfway back down the M1 and on the bus. Parents and clubs should be proud of them.
Years ago Bill Furniss, now GB head coach at British Swimming, when he was the coach to Nova Centurion told the kids that this was not an event that suited Nottinghamshire training scheme but that the kids should always swim it and enjoy every minute of it – this they did.
Thanks guys for giving us a few heart-rendering moments as to “will we” or “wont we” stay up – but stay up we did!! Our bright green shirts and matching swim caps did us all proud.