Celebrating 2021 Season and Club Awards

Message from the President

A wonderful eveningFriday night at our first club dinner for a couple of years. And for those who thought we might not have much to celebrate, we had a surprising amount - even Awards to make!

Friday night was therefore something of a celebration of the glue that holds a club together in challenging time; a surprising number of people who competed in sanctioned events; club training squads have never been so popular and when denied pools, many of our members took to the ocean ...

So the winners were:

Female Swimmer of the Year: Awarded by a poll among our coaching team, this year's winner was Rebecca Wayne who has gone from strength to strength at squad and been a strong competitor in oceans swims over the last two years. Other nominees were Wendy Cooper, Christine Geftakis and Gwen de Mel. Joint Head Coach Gordon Whyte made the presentation.

Male Swimmer of the Year turned out to be the Club President Graham Campbell (so I really can't comment much other than feel rather honoured by Gordon Whyte's kind words). Other well deserved nominees were Eduardo Moura and Bill Yeates, both relatively recent members.

Max van Gelder's "Max Award' for the swimmer scoring most on the State, National (and sometimes World) Records scorecard. This was a pretty close run thing, since the last award (2019), with one point separating the winner, Stuart Meares, and runner up, Tom Taylor. Also in the running were Peter Michaelson, Marilyn Earp and Bec Pearse. Max came up from Canberra especially to make the Presentation.

Participation Award by Race Secretary Patrick Chandler(calculated on most carnival days attended, treating each day of multi-day sanctioned events as a separate event): Christine Geftakis (who has thrown herself into swimming with gusto since rejoining), one carnival day ahead of Pat Birgan and Helen Campbell, in turn one day ahead of Tony Tooher and Graham Campbell.

President's Award / Club Member(s) of the year: as President, for me this year's choice was a lay down misère for Wilson Gamble and Gordon Whyte for the tremendous effort they put in to ensure we maximised every opportunity for pool training - the reward being full house on Wednesday evenings (20+ swimmers) - initially under Gordon and now run by Wilson; and near full house Sunday mornings (consistently 30/35 swimmers over 8 lanes) initially under Wilson and now Gordon (and thanks also to the other coaches and coaching assistants who eased the burden).

Also celebrate on his reaching a significant birthday (one with a Zero in it!) was a presentation of a personalised club towel to John Pagden, one of our earliest members, a regular competitor, most recently at Glenbrook, and seen daily down at Manly beach, body surfing. Good on you, John!

And a big, big thank you to Christine Geftakis for organising a thoroughly enjoyable evening. And Claire Oxlade doubling as Official Photographer!