Cairns Mudcrabs Meet Report 2024
The Cairns Mudcrabs Masters Swimming Club held our first swim meet in 6 years on Saturday 16th November at the Gordonvale Aquatic Centre.
The meet was attended by swimmers from North Queensland clubs such as Townsville Rats of Tobruk, Long Tan Legends, Mossman Meteors, Atherton Mountaineers, Bunna-barra Masters (Cairns) and CLAMS (Cairns) as well as some visiting swimmers from Ipswich City, Malvern Marlins and Hobart Dolphins.
The short course meet was held in memory of Masters’ swimmer and Mudcrabs life member, Thelma Bryan, who passed away last year. Thelma’s Butterfly was legendary, so two Butterfly events had special prizes attached to them. In the 50m Butterfly, Judy Clarke from Atherton and Vassili Efimov from Bunna-barras both swam closest to their nominated time, and each took away $50 cash. The Thelma Bryan Award was given to a swimmer who showed the ‘spirit of Thelma’ in the 100m Butterfly and quite fittingly, this award went to Judy Clarke.
One relay was held, and we decided to do things a little different this time. Each swimmer nominated a time for their 50m Freestyle and was then put into a team of 4 based on their time. The idea was that each team’s overall time was within 1-2 seconds of each other. The race was very close, however the team of Karen from Muddies and Kevin, Burt and Tony from Townsville came in first and took home a bag of goodies each for their efforts.
Special thanks to:
- John Barret, who travelled from Townsville to referee alongside Mudcrabs member, Karen Whitworth,
- The team at MSQ for supporting us to hold this meet,
- Our sponsors and donors.
A great afternoon was had by all. Even though this was our first meet in while, the Mudcrabs proved we still have a wealth of knowledge and experience in the club to hold a successful meet. We enjoyed having swimmers and friends join us at our great little venue in Gordonvale. We are in the process of reviewing the meet and deciding if we hold another meet next year. In the meantime, we will be busy preparing for our open water swim series to be held at Lake Barrine in 2025.
Gaby Donnelly
QCN Meet Director
Results:
