Pembroke and District Swimming club start the swimming season in style!
Pembroke and District Swimming Club recently hosted the annual Tudor Shield Swimming Gala at Pembroke Leisure Centre, an event which is all about competitive swimming in a fun format for youngsters
from 6 years of age and upwards!
The gala is also unique in that every race is a relay which is somewhat different to the usual format that the youngsters swim in at the various meets they attend throughout the rest of the year. The pool was bursting with local teams from Tenby and Haverfordwest in addition to a large team from Llanelli to fill the four lanes.
A large crowd of supporting parents crowded onto the poolside and in the viewing gallery to watch the excitement unfold. Each team had large numbers of swimmers which made for a noisy time on poolside and proceedings starting positively for the local team with Pembroke winning the first three relay races, whilst the fourth race saw Haverfordwest taking first place ahead of Pembroke by only 3 hundredths of a second!
Action galore continues
The afternoon then continued with Pembroke winning event five before Tenby finally got some maximum points in event six.
After two hours of exciting racing with each team taking turns to win races, the Pembroke team finally secured victory after 41 events with the lion's share of the points.
The whole gala came to an exciting climax in event 41 with the "cannon relay" which involves 10 swimmers from each age group of the teams completing a length of the relay.
This really gets the crowd and swimmers shouting their team on and from the start Pembroke took the lead, only to be pegged back by Llanelli who then held the lead for several lengths. This being a blue ribbon event in any gala only spurred Pembroke on again and on the final length Pembroke took the first place over Llanelli by less than 3 tenths of a second!
The final results were as follows:
1st Pembroke 1489 points
Joint 2nd place to Llanelli and Tenby 1258 points
4th Haverfordwest 1097 points
The Pembroke coaches and children who took part were all exhausted but jubilant and look forward to next year's rematch!
Any budding swimmers who are interested in joining Pembroke and District Swimming Club please see: www.pembrokeswimmingclub.co.uk