Swimming Sport
T
he PSA Swimming season for 2006 was an exciting one for the emergent Trinity Swimming Team. Having finished a respectable 4th in 2005, the hopes were high for an improvement in 2006. Since entering the PSA Trinity College has never been placed in the top three Mr Dion Mepham Team Coach of this competition, so any move up the ladder would have heralded a new era in Trinity swimming. The season started with a record turnout at summer holiday training. Many new swimmers tried their hand at improving their times enough to break into the team. As the summer wore on, it became apparent that this would be a special year. The first glimpse of this was the number of Year 8 and 9 swimmers who were improving on personal best times at the Pastoral Care Group carnivals. Mr Duckett’s special technical work with this group had obviously been paying dividends.
196
confidence boost coming into the major competition of the season. On the day of the Inters, the boys were well prepared by a magnificent lunch arranged by the mothers of the team, followed by an inspirational movie and a team warm up. Despite the bus being late and heavy traffic causing a few heart attacks, we arrived in time for the first race. Fittingly, Captain Alex Lee led the team in the first race of the night. Corey McIntosh (Year 11) broke one of two individual records achieved on the night, in the U/16 50m Backstroke, in 28.25seonds. He also won the Div 1 100m Freestyle and 50m Butterfly events. Jakeb Norman won the U/14 Div 1 50m Freestyle, whilst James Ballard commenced his TC swimming career with a win in the U/13 Div 1 50m Breaststroke. Second division winners on the night included NJ Cartagena (U/14 Div 2 50m Freestyle, Div 2 50m Butterfly), Tim Quinlan (U/16 Div 2 100m Breaststroke), Luke Pardini (U/13 Div 2 50m Breaststroke), Taylor Colton (U/14 Div 2 50m Backstroke) and Jack Connelly (U/13 Div 2 50m Butterfly).
At the Age Championships, a number of outstanding performances were recorded and the winners of the championship had to fight uncharacteristically hard for their title, due to the overall increase in the strength of each age group competing.
Trinity were also the most successful relay school winning seven of the relay races (U/ 13 Div 1 Medley and Freestyle and Div 2 Freestyle, U/14 Div 1 Medley, U/15 Div 2 Freestyle, Open Div 1 and Div 2 Freestyle). Scotch won four relays and Christ Church three.
Consequently there were high expectations for the Quads competition in early March. Traditionally, the Quads allows us to gauge our chances at the Inters and a strong second place behind Wesley was a nice
Credit must go to Luke Pardini (Year 8), who maintained his composure in the face of a questionable disqualification in the Freestyle and a false start in the Breaststroke (which saw the field swim 40m before
