The County Championships finished on Sunday and it was wonderful to celebrate some fantastic racing from swimmers of all ages, to congratulate 68 new Somerset ASA County Champions 2025 and to see so many Long Course County Records broken.
Over the 5 days, the meet was run by:
- 76 Officials including mentoring for 9 new JL1 trainees, 5 Trainee Referees and 1 Young Volunteer Official;
- 58 Volunteers from 19 of our 22 competing clubs who worked brilliantly as a team and also mentored…
- …16 Young Volunteers piloting our new YV scheme;
- 2 Presidents, Paul Chillingworth Somerset County President and special Guest Maurice Cleaver, South West Region President; and
- 1 fantastic caterer, Mary, who kept us all well fed and watered!
Between them, these lovely people racked up an astonishing 2000+ hours poolside…and this doesn’t include the Team Managers and Coaches for each of our clubs…not to mention the hundreds of hours dedicated by Kelly and her team behind the scenes!
Our sport is very volunteer hungry but here in Somerset our volunteer culture is thriving. Our top ten clubs for volunteers per swimmer are as follows:
Burnham on Sea
Clevedon
Cheddar Kingfishers
- 4th= Bridgwater and Frome
- 6th Millfield School
- 7th= Wells and Norton Radstock
- 9th Yeovil
- 10th= Wincanton and Street & District
Thank you for all your positivity, enthusiasm and humour – even when it was super busy – we couldn’t do this for our swimmers without you. I am proud to be a member of Team Somerset and look forward to working with you all again.
Volunteer Coordinator, February 10th 2025