Meet Report - White Rose
On Sunday morning some of our younger swimmers competed in the White Rose meet which up until recent years has been an annual team gala which acts as Yorkshire’s qualifier for the national arena leagues final. Typically, the meet attracts all the top clubs in the county however this year’s addition saw a reduced field of only 6. The two big ‘City of’ clubs, Leeds and Sheffield, each fielding an A & B team in addition to Harrogate and of course us, Doncaster DARTES. The meet organisers are confident that by next year we will be back up to a full complement – which is great to hear.
The DARTES squad was 28 strong, drawn in the main from our Phase 3 & 4 performance squads however it was hugely encouraging to see a strong contingent of feeder club swimmers embracing the challenge and contributing massively to the effort, especially in the younger age groups where they excelled. Our thanks go to Pete Hardy at Armthorpe, Emily Cartwright at Adwick and Chris Goddard at Dearne Valley for your support and coordination, we couldn’t have done it without you. Long may it continue and maybe we’ll see some of you in our training squads in the not-too-distant future.
The meet format see’s 9, 10, 11 and 12 year old swimmers compete over an action packed 2 hours. Every age group swims individual events in each of the four strokes in addition to a freestyle and medley relay, with the meet culminating in an 8-swimmer cannon.
‘White Rose’ is a bit of gear change from the usual open meets we attend and some of the wide eyes and nervous looks on our swimmers’ faces were testament to that. Think BML on steroids and you’re not too far away! The atmosphere was electric, music pumping out loud, a jam-packed warm up, fancy dress, banks of colour co-ordinated team support, air horns, drums, screaming teammates – there was a lot going on, even a prestart team parade to welcome the swimmers to poolside.
In the pool we did ourselves proud and competed hard all morning, never being too far from the competitive end of each race. The final points totals were as follows.
City of Leeds A 371
City of Sheffield A 309
City of Leeds B 286
Doncaster DARTES 270
City of Sheffield B 182
Harrogate 137
So, a credible 4th place finish against two of the country’s top junior squads. To cap it off we finished a deserved 3rd place in the cannon, demonstrating just how competitive this squad was.
We also received some brilliant feedback from one of the meet officials who commented how well-mannered and polite all of our swimmers were. Thank you to everybody involved, you can be justifiably proud of your efforts both in and out of the pool. See you all next year!
The DARTES squad was;
Girls
Abigail Jinks
Darcy Nelson
Emilia Keefe
Emily Kirk
Freya Cooper
Georgie Arnold
Jessica Hubery
Jessica Wilson
Lexie Goddard
Millie Dey
Miranda Birkhill
Phoebe Wetherill
Ruby Wakelin
Sofia Sanders
Sophie Barley
Boys
Alex Belk
Alexander Drury
Archie Ainslie
Casper Burdon
George Kaye
George Knopp
Harris Chapman
Jack Jones
James Ellis
Jenson Stevenson
Lucas Stallard
Stephen Tuffrey
Theo Kersley
Full results to be shared once we have recieved them from the meet organisers.
