We have a tradition at Dartes to expose our young athletes to all the events on the Olympic pool programme. That includes the toughest events of all (1500m/800m Freestyle, 400m IM, and 200m Butterfly). We believe it's an important part of their swimming development and we call those who take part: The Animal Squad. Most seasons witness at least one meet where Dartes' younger swimmers dominate one of those Animal events. It's usually a level 3 meet where most of the squad can get involved, and it's usually the 200m...

Here at Dartes we like to keep a close eye on progress. That's equally true whether we're talking about performances at Yorkshires; the quantity qualifying for Nationals; how many Dartes records go tumbling; or simply how many athletes we have from each of our feeder clubs. Knowing the numbers helps us to spot weaknesses early and helps to show when a new initiative has made a difference. As the number of swimmers through the door has a direct relationship to future success (both at the Dartes level, and the feeder...

After an exhausting qualifying window with 6 meets in just two months, followed by the Open Water Regional Championships in June, we can all breathe a sigh of relief. With such a young squad it's been a massive learning curve for so many, and a lot of what we normally take for granted, has had to be relearned along the way. But a squad of five is an excellent result, especially considering that last year only two made it. It's no surprise that our veteran campaigners is back again: Phoebe...

The benchmark was set in 2024 by Jessica Hubery, the gauntlet was thrown down so who would be next to pick it up? Well 3 other swimmers decided it was their turn to bask in the sun......literally! Freya Cooper, Jessica Eggitt, Joseph Watts joined Jessica Hubery in the sun before they all tackled the SENER Open Water Championships at Sale, Manchester for a bit of Long(er) Course racing. For the likes of Freya Cooper, Jessica Eggitt and Joseph Watts this represented a first in competing in Open Water, a refreshing...

June has proved rather busy with meets, Club Champiosnhips and Club Visits so this test set took a little time to put up. It's here now though and some good improvements throughout our top squad along with new additions to the all time leaderboard. British Swimming's marker of 3mins for a 200m kick was the Gold standard of years gone by. A number of Saturday mornings following this announcement included lovely tough 20x100m max effort set of kick to develop more power and have a sneaky look at who's closing...

Not very many people would honestly say they enjoy a straight 2,000m swim. Fewer still would enjoy it, knowing they're swimming for a time and being ranked in a league table not only with the rest of their training group, but with their previous best times too. Nevertheless, that's what National Squad were up to on Monday morning. As an exercise in finding out who the tough cookies are, it's pretty unbeatable. The mind games start around 800m - not even half way through. "Mind games?" your parents are now...

There can be no doubt (among those of us who remember) that Dartes suffered after its decision to move away from Hall Cross school in the centre of Doncaster in 2016 years ago. It was a necessary move, but it still hurt, and forced us to take water time at the extreme edges of the Doncaster borough (and on occasion even outside its borders in Minsthorpe). We've always kept one eye on travel distances when considering new pool time, as we know it's one of the two big deterrents to...

Did anyone notice how quiet it was on Friday evening and Saturday morning at training? No Jessica Hubery talking her usual nonsense or Phoebe Weatherill complaining about the Water Blower pushing her back? For those of you who didn't notice it was the 3-day NER weekend for our youth/senior athletes at Dartes. This event took place at the Ponds Forge International Sports Centre and by all accounts our athletes were focused, determined to solidify their places in the Summer Nationals and that showed with some extremely fast racing. The ultimate...

This evening, amidset the relentless National Qualifying Window and tough training, Jessica Hubery demolished the old new standard and became the first to hit that sub 6min mark that we've been pointing at for some time. Chasing hard behind her was Phoebe Weatherill (also not far off the sub 6min mark), and Kiera Binns. Notable performances also go to Freya Cooper and Ruby Wakelin, consistently staying below that 7min barrier, a huge improvement from previous iterations and Adam Robinson, making huge strides from his previous performance. Pos Name Date Rep...

Another solid test set from Phase 5 to kick-start 2025. With one of the youngest Phase 5 squads in history, tumbling records was never on the cards (although we're getting very close) but even without a new record, the kick-speed was very impressive. We've always said that 6 mins was achievable, previous iterations of this test set would always see the same 3 names at the top of the leaderboard averaging in the very low 6 mins (average time across all 4 reps), demonstrated in top fashion by Jess, Phoebe...