Posted on Friday 16th October, 2020

Around the Clubs

October 2020

MSQ President – Cheryl Brodribb

It is good to know that most of our clubs are back swimming again after an exceptionally and unexpected long break. We look forward to having all pools open soon.

I hope that many of our members are enjoying the “Time Trial Postal Swims” and the fun and friendship again.

Christina and I have continued our fortnightly Zoom meetings to keep abreast of all MSA and MSQ matters. Even though there were no swim meets there is always something that needs attending to.

The SSM calendar is starting to look good and the Board will discuss this at our October meeting. The 2021 State Championships is on the agenda and a decision will be made as to where they will be held and the dates. PPMG are also looking at hosting their Games in 2021, with the 2020 Games having been cancelled due to COVID, and we await further information from them. MSQ have advised that they would be happy to host the swimming if the 2021 Games go ahead.

At the October meeting the Board will be discussing “added value” for the 2021 membership year. Some good suggestions have been received for us to consider.

The 2021 GBRMG planning is in full swing with added sports for next year. Swimming will be held at the Tobruk Memorial Swimming Pool Cairns 20-22 May. Entries are open and there is an assurance that if for some reason borders were to be closed again refunds would be forthcoming. Come and enjoy some wonderful North Queensland hospitality.

It is always good to catch up with members and I was pleased to meet Cotton Tree Masters President Gay Bradley and partner Bruce whilst they were on holidays in Cairns. Brian and I enjoyed a morning tea with them along with lots of chatter and laughs.

VP North Ted Bunt celebrated a “big O” birthday in August and had a full weekend of fun and celebrations. On the Saturday morning Ted and some friends completed 60 x 100’s to celebrate, it was tiring just watching, followed by a morning tea at Trinity Beach.

As a Board we are always here to assist our members so please do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or suggestions.

Best wishes, Cheryl.

Sunshine Region

Caboolture & Districts Masters Swimming Club

President: Neil Newman

Earlier this year Caboolture Crays moved to the Burpengary Regional Aquatic Centre from the smaller Fountain Road pool.

We are now training there with the adult squad program provided by the centre twice a week, and also have casual sessions several times a week.

We successfully lobbied the local council to finally get the 50M pool surveyed and certified with Swimming Australia. We are now in a position to host sanctioned swim meets and have any records made official. Hopefully negotiations can soon recommence in regard to changing the club name to reflect our association with Belgravia Leisure. We will be using this change to get greater exposure and push for more members. Our club would also be looking to host a meet at the venue at a time yet to be determined in 2021.

Vale Brian Fernley – Brian joined Caboolture Crays in 1997 and has always been an active member as meet director and club captain and was also a life member. He was also an active member of the Bribie Island Surf Club and officiated at many surf carnivals. Brian passed away on the 2 October 2020.

Rackley Masters Swimming Club

President: Andrew Ward

Rackley Masters were able to get back in the water on 16 June. This was probably the longest most of the squad had been out of the pool in the last five years, and although the layoff worked wonders for our movie catch-ups, the first month or so was a shock to the system and amazing how long it took to get back the feel for the water.

Thanks to City Venue Management for getting our pools up and running and also Coach Alessandro and all the coaches for keeping in contact via our Facebook page with the land sessions and for showing some mercy in “easing” us back into training. Regardless of the pain and the dark mornings, everyone was so glad to get back in the water! Our Postal Swims are planned for later this month.

Noosa Masters Swimming club

President: Ian Tucker

Noosa Masters swimmers are back to full operation since the COVID 19 lock outs. Our regular swim squads have returned to near 80% strength and attended by around 20 members 3 days a week. With no competition until the new year, focus has been on maintaining aerobic fitness with some shorter work leading up to the MSQ organised timed swim events. These events run on Tuesdays and Sundays during September and October.

PHOTOS – Please note that the group shots, members were fully doused in anti Covid-19 lotion before photos!!! No social distancing required!

On a more social front the club hosted a COVID limited numbers, socially distanced BYO picnic in the park last month including novelty races. A good chance to do some cross training.

Speaking of cross training, the club is about to embark on a 10 month physiology exercise program run once a month including stretching pre-swim squads on pool deck.

Upcoming social events include SUP/Kayak and BBQ in the sounds, jazz on the marina wharf, barefoot bowls and possibly Melbourne Cup Day.

Our AGM was held a couple of weeks ago with a new committee sworn in.

President	Ian Tucker
Vice President	Robyn Selby
Secretary	Kerry Blackwell
Treasurer	Studley Martin

On a sadder note we lost one of our loved Life Member, Olga McCausland on 16 September after a short illness and husband Bob and family are dealing with their sudden loss. I am sure the wider Masters Swimming Community will fondly remember Olga as a worthy competitor and in later years a trusted timekeeper and socializer. Sadly, missed by all.

UQ Masters Swimming club

Martin Banks – President

As the COVID-19 restrictions continued across the country UQ Masters members and other adult swimmers have been jumping in to the cutback training sessions, and have been making the most of it. Our members do realise that we are very fortunate having a pool, coaches and a number of choices of training sessions. We now have one hour sessions to choose from, and Coach Sean Williams is certainly designing plenty of challenging sessions to get the most out of every one of those 60 minutes.

UQ Masters are currently training in the 25m pool due to ongoing repair work at the Aquatic Centre. It is hoped we will be able to return to the 50m pool and full training timetable in November. The mornings are getting brighter and warmer – yay!

Trophies and towels were recently presented to club members at the Annual UQ Swimming Club Awards day, via Zoom, including the Most Improved trophy to Jacki Steyn, and the Coach’s Choice trophy to Kylie Cox. Team UQ towels were presented to our three Australian Record breakers – Brett Woods, Stefano Zerbini and Caroline Saxby. Towel awards were also earned by our Queensland Record breakers – Ben O’Connor, Martin Banks, Suzie Hollis, Nola Macaulay, Christina Scolaro and Ross Holden. Congratulations to all these swimmers.

Coach Sean Williams is managing to navigate the limitations at the UQ Aquatic Centre due to COVID-19 and centre repairs. It is a new challenge to keep the squad’s motivation and fitness levels up with no swim meets to compete in. Swimmers are gradually improving fitness after the forced break, and are looking forward to some targeted sessions in the coming weeks to record times for the MSQ Postal Time Trial Meet.

Activities:

Training hard
Posting some of our session on Facebook
Check out more here

https://www.facebook.com/uqmastersswimming/videos/1285142221682977/?t=0

Albany Creek Masters Swimming

President: Michael Kennedy

The Ducks have done very well since re-surfacing again for our Sunday meets in the early part of July. There was a degree of intent with the coaches Natasha, Andrew, Karina and the members. This was focused on welcoming, easing in and getting back to swimming.

Having said that I’m pleased spring has arrived with renewed energies, 3 new swimmers to the club and a feeling of relief generally. The focus now on 2021 developing ideas to what could be next year. We are looking towards a new website with all that entails. Two members, president and treasurer, attended the flash forum put on by the Moreton Bay shire council on recovery put simply. Covid-19 management protocol went well, and we are generally working towards simply swimming. We will be establishing a new executive at the AGM and looking towards 2021 options.

Central Region

Caribeae Rocky Crocs, Rockhampton

Happy Spring everyone from the Rocky Crocs 😊

The Crocs have been dormant over the winter and COVID break, however we are currently in the process of organising a Rocky Crocs Reunion on Saturday 21 November. We hope this may stimulate our community and attract past members back to the group again for the Spring/Summer season. This event will be held Saturday 21st November in Rockhampton. We would welcome anyone who would like to attend this event. For more details or to express your interest in attending please e-mail caribeaerockycrocs@gmail.com.

The Crocs are also looking for volunteers to take on our official committee member roles for the club. A recent call out prior to our combined AGM with the junior club did not see anyone come forward for these vital positions. We hope the reunion may be what we need to see the Crocs continue into 2021. We look forward to seeing what other clubs have been up to.

Rum City, Bundaberg

Rum City are hosting a come & try this Sunday 11 October.

Rum City has commenced their regular Sunday morning swims. They are hosting a come & try on Sunday 11 October to promote the club and attract new members. Next month, they will hold a club race were swimmers attempt to swim to their nominated times.

North Mackay Sinkers

A single club night instigated at the PWSC to ease us into the 2020-21 season. (starts Oct 5)
Continued our regular casual Saturday 8am session.
A Sinkers team of 4 swam in the Swim around Keppel event. Finished 1st in the teams section in 5hr 11min for the 20k event.
Two Members met Andre Slade of the Oceanfit podcast and swim site to talk OWS sites in the area including our great Balnagowan section of the pioneer river. Podcast is available.

Hervey Bay Humpbacks

Here in Hervey Bay we were lucky during the Covid “shut down” that our beach is very accessible and usually quite calm. We began swimming in groups of two which grew as restrictions eased. It was a good way to keep some fitness and keep in touch with members. Our Secretary sent out a weekly “keeping in Touch” email including photos. This has continued as not all members have returned to the Sunday morning sessions yet!

Humpbacks have been back meeting at the Aquatic Centre since August. We were delayed returning because of major maintenance on our 25m heated pool and cooler weather restricting the solar heating on the 50m pool.

Since returning we have had about 20 members swimming on Sunday mornings (down a bit on our 30+ before Covid)

We recently swam our Postal Equinox Challenge against the Maida Vale Masters in WA. This had to be transferred from the Solstice for obvious reasons. Having been back in the water for less time than our rivals we sadly lost the trophy this year by the narrowest of margins.

We’ve now started concentrating on the September/October Postal swim each Sunday. It’s a great chance to update start, turn and finish skills and also for those members who have never used the online entry system to learn how to enter a meet.

We’ve had one new member since returning to the pool and two prospective members have visited twice.

We’ve set the date for our AGM in November and as we have three “retirements” from the committee we will definitely see a few changes.

Gladstone Gropers

The Gropers recommenced swimming 19th July in the 25m indoor heated pool. Usually we have a Sunday social coffee after the swim at the pool in premises shared with the local swim club. Covid19 has bought a change as there is no lingering allowed at the pool. Currently we meet after training at East Shores for a lovely coffee and chat.

The club was successful in obtaining a grant which enables us to look at rebranding our Gropers symbol and improving our marketing to attract more members for the club and Masters Swimming in general.

As of this coming Sunday, the Gropers will be training in the 50m pool on Sundays and the 25m pool on Tuesdays and Thursdays. As usual we enjoy a variation of coaches being lucky to have Head Coach Don Jones, Rod Porteous, Russell Ogden and Sandra Pugh all available to provide us with great training sessions and insights in improving our swimming technique.

Recently the Gropers remember the year 2000 when we were the hosts for the National Titles. Amazingly we still have quite a few members who were in the club at that time!

Fabulous QGS Team from 2020 Nationals in Gladstone

Maryborough Masters

Maryborough Masters have been participating in the Unprecedented Postal Swim Meet, with great participation in the short course events (see below). Long course events are still in progress.

12 Swimmers completed 50 free
06 Swimmers completed the 50 back
07 Swimmers completed 50 breast
04 Swimmers completed 50 fly
08 Swimmers completed 100 free
04 swimmers completed 100 back
06 swimmers completed 100 breast
04 swimmers completed 100 IM
05 swimmers completed 200 free
03 swimmers completed 200 breast
01 swimmers completed 200 IM
05 swimmers completed 400 free
02 swimmers completed 400 breast
02 swimmers completed 1500 free

Christmas in July

20 members and their families attended the annual Christmas in July celebration held at the Portside Café & Restaurant located on the picturesque Mary River.

South Region

Miami Masters Swimming Club

The past few months have seen good numbers at all our training sessions as we come out of the winter. We have 2 coaches at every session ensuring swimmers receive more personalised coaching. The numbers are especially good considering the discomfort of the pool environment at present due to the pool redevelopment project, and of course, the COVID concerns. Everyone is very enthusiastic, and many have already regained their fitness to pre-COVID times. This is being tested as we embark on the MSQ Postal Event. As part of our promotion of the postal event, the first 50 members to register for the event will receive a free cap sponsored by Panasonic Air Conditioning.

Coaches: Mark Jordan, Kim McKeon and Roger Belmar

Our COVID-delayed Presentation Night for the 2019 awards was finally able to be held on Friday 28^th August at the Burleigh Heads Surf Club. It was a great night with our coach Kim McKeon as Guest Speaker. See pictures below.

QMM Swimmer Of The Year – Denise Robertson

At the beginning of September, we were delighted to receive the ‘The Verge Retirement Village’ Grant of $3,000 for purchase of promotional tee-shirts. This is to assist in the recruitment and retention of members following the COVID lockdown. All members will receive a free tee-shirt and we are hoping it will be an incentive for potential new members and for anyone who has not re-joined for 2020 to take advantage of the 16-month membership option.

We are investigating the possibility of applying for a community grant to provide special equipment to assist hearing impaired swimmers.

We currently have 100 members with 11 new/re-joining members since 1 September.

QMM invited other clubs to join in their Sunday Time Trials

Yeronga Yabbies

The yabbies have timed the 50m events for postals and are planning on swimming 100m events next week.

Our pool is beautiful with a fantastic temperature.

Yeronga Yabbies has a few members working through injuries at the moment.

Our team remains full of fun and optimism for a 2021 of racing with rest of the swimming community who we miss.

Somerset Masters Swim Club

The Somerset Masters Swim Club is a small Gold Coast Club for Masters although we have a large adult squad base – some of which are pictured above. We have a few keen members in the adult squad who are Masters Members and our Coach Greg Schulte leads the squad very well. This past year we have had no swimmers compete in Masters’ competitions to the best of our knowledge, although this is not surprising due to Covid19 disruptions. We are hoping to get more of our adults into the Masters Swim Club and compete and are very hopeful this will occur as the health crisis eases. Although we are a small club in terms of numbers, we are keen to try and grow the club and increase our membership and encourage those in the Club to compete.

Toowoomba Tadpoles Masters Club

April commenced with a shutdown of pool access to members driving many members to attempt adapting from an aquatic environment to land mammals by riding push bikes, walking, jogging. This evolution was not a complete success and saw other to resort to all manner of other extremes that can’t be published. The committee moved into the world of Zoom for committee meetings, though it was agreed that there would be a concerted effort to maintain regular and innovative communication with members during the COVID lock out.

May was still a dry month for the club, though the committee determined that it was a good opportunity to arrange to produce some club togs for members as it was agreed that they were not going to wear out in a hurry. Newsletter editor Sue was busy putting out a fortnightly mini-newsletter to maintain communication and links with the 53 members.

Coming into the start of winter some members resorted to displaying their dry-land swimming techniques with several quite bizarre examples, not necessarily for publication in a range of locations up in the high country of the Great Diving Range. The most innovative of all was Secretary Trudy who combined her love of wine with her love of swimming (without water). Though it must have been an omen as the club was fortunate to be able commence swimming with some strict guidelines and procedures from early June. The process and details required by MSQ was a critical factor in the club being able to return to a regular program.

The club is responsible for providing members to volunteer as lifeguards for the scheduled swim program and over a few weeks we saw an increase to the number of deck supervisors to 20 who hold the RLSS Bronze Medallion. This is an impressive effort by the members involved and with such a good number it helps to spread the workload and provide us with a resource that is always available in the case of an emergency.

The increase in our Deck Supervisors reflects the overall increase in membership of 17 members in the 2020/2021 period. New members bring new enthusiasm and energy to the club and it is an interesting time for the club.

In preparation for future club carnivals and swim meets the club has engaged a coach on a weekly basis to help develop and improve the ability in the water and we have been successful in securing some funding towards the purchase of Meet Manager software as valuable resource for the club’s annual 1500m postal swim. Club legend Don Taylor has been recognised by MSA for his swimming prowess in reaching the Millions milestone.

The warmer spring weather has been a welcome change and as the club has gradually been able to add some more social activities with the easing of COVID restrictions. All in all, the committee and members have done extremely well under the circumstances and have maintained the club motto of “Fitness, Friendship and Fun”.

Uni Wahoos Masters Swimming

Musgrave Park Pool reopened recently and are slowly engaging with the community and coaches to start SwimFit and Masters swimming. The Uni Wahoos are working with the pool operators to re-establish the club at the pool since it was closed for redevelopment.

The approach the Wahoos are taking is as follows:

Get 6 other people to form a re-establishment committee (no cost to join the club as the Wahoos have funding in place from all their years) so that they don’t lose incorporation
That committee would then be able to work in the coming months for a 2021 move to get membership in MSQ
Move forward with more planning in 2021

The local Brisbane City Councillor published the following in his monthly newsletter to help support the club’s re-establishment:

North Region

Cairns Mudcrabs

Muddies Club is back in the waters of Woree and Gordonvale Pools – YAY!
Training is progressing well and all are looking forward to the coming year, COVID permitting.

Members have been utilising the lakes, ocean and home pools to keep up some form of fitness and also exercising on land – all under the guidance of our Head Coach, Theresa Donnelly, who has worked tirelessly to keep the momentum on track.

Several members participated in Cairns Iron Man for various teams and different legs of the event. All members are anxiously awaiting the GBRMG in May and fingers are crossed for the event to go ahead.

It is gratifying to see, that, after several years of requesting assistance from various VPN’s to assist with the running of friendly meets between FNQ clubs, something is materialising. Thank you so much.

Muddies club hopes that all will stay safe and well and look forward to fun and friendship in the coming year.

The ‘CLAMS’ Cairns Legends and Masters Swimming

The CLAMS were back in our magnificent new pool, okay a few years old, but no sooner were we back in the swim of things, the 10 lane 50 metre masterpiece needed urgent repairs and was shut down for repairs. It is now open – I think we will blame COVID…

Keen members were in home gyms, stationary bikes, running and isolating during the COVID lockdowns. We survived and are back to enjoying our Saturday and Sunday morning training sessions and coffee debriefs.

We have not participated in any huge events but a number of us had a great time in the Cairns Ironman. We swimmers complained about how hot it was in the wetsuits during the early morning first leg ‘the swim’… We did feel a little guilty later in the day watching our mates complete a bike and run in 30 degree heat.

We are gathering more members as people are inspired to do more as COVID restrictions lift and in anticipation of future meets – next year… the Great Barrier Reef Masters Games and a trip to Darwin for the Nationals!

VP North, Ted Bunt celebrated the Big 60 with 60 x 100m in the pool – a pretty impressive effort!

Townsville Aquaholics

Townsville Aquaholics have been back training their usual 4 mornings a week for the past few months. While there hasn’t been anything on as far as meets go, squad members have participated in a local social swim along the Strand held by the Townsville Open Water Swimming Association, as well as the Great Keppel Island Swim. We’ve also enjoyed a number of social Saturday morning post-training chinwags over coffee.

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