The trip to the east coast at Easter is always one of the highlights for the younger end of the club. Ennerdale pool often encourages excellent performances, and coming as it does, in the middle of long course season, boosts confidence with a brief return to short course racing. For many, it's also a good excuse to stay over in the nearby Premier Inn and make happy memories of a 3 day away meet. This year followed those traditions and served up an outstanding set of results for our younger...

The first week in April proved to be a busy one at Dartes. We had already planned to be attending two competitions: British Championships during the week (Commonwealth Games Trials), and the Hull Easter meet at the weekend. What wasn't expected until quite recently was a pool closure and dryland sessions to replace the lost pool time. April's British Championships is the flagship domestic swimming competition. It usually doubles up as a qualifying event for the major meet of the year, usually one or more of Olympic Games, World Championships,...

The club had a busy weekend with Sheffield Premier meet running for our top squads and the John Harriman Championships entertaining the younger end of the programme. While that was happening, a number from Performance 5 took part in round 2 of their England Talent Programme on Zoom, and Lucas Lee (Ros) was invited to attend his first taste of the North East Region's para-swim training run by Richmond Dales coach Keith Hall. So a weekend with lots of things going on involving lots of people. As we haven't been...

Back in November we reported on how a number of our swimmers had dominated the Doncaster Schools Cross Country. The next step, early February at Campsall, was to gain selection for the South Yorkshire team to compete at the ESAA Nationals at Hop Farm in Kent on 19th March. Grace Blair (Adw) was successful in that selection process and travelled to Kent to represent the southern part of the White Rose county. The other two battling for a spot on the team were Katie Wilson (Arm) and Theo Kearsley (Adw)...

The English Schools Swimming Association Inter-Divisional Championships is always one of the highlights of the year for those selected to take part. This year's event, the first since Covid arrived, took place this weekend at the Alan Higgs Centre in Coventry. This brand new 50m pool was built in 2020 as an addition to the existing Alan Higgs Leisure Centre. Rumour has it, the ESSA Champs will return there again next year. The Inter-Divisional Championships brings together eight regional divisions from around England. Roughly the same as the regions used...

Performance Coach Rob has already visited Armthorpe and Dearne Valley in recent months, so this week's visit to Spa Askern was another introductory visit ticked off. Head Coach Dave managed to squeeze in a trip to Adwick a couple of months ago, and both he and Chairperson Gail took Rob along to meet Adwick's Chairman soon after his arrival in Doncaster. So Wednesday evening was a great opportunity to see how another of our clubs operates - albeit currently based at Adwick due to renovations of the Askern pool. There...

It's been a busy couple of weeks with Head Coach Dave Cuthbert visiting Adwick ASC to look at a few swimmers being called up to the 9/10 year olds team for Yorkshires next month (more on that later). Hot on his heels, Coach Rob Hudson visited Dearne Valley and Armthorpe to deliver clinics for them which have been very well received. We hope to deliver a few more club visits in the near future, so if your club doesn't have one booked in, please get in touch. With Yorkshire teams...

With the New Year well and truly with us, we're making some changes to squad names to make it clear what the Performance Stream is all about. The names aren't changing much, but it should add a little clarity. For the most part we are simply swapping the word "Phase" with the new name "Performance". Phase 5 becomes Performance 5 Phase 4 becomes Performance 4 Phase 3 becomes Performance 3 We're creating a new squad called Performance 2 Phase 2 becomes Performance 1 Many people have called them P1-5 for...

So the first weekend of Yorkshire Championships is behind us and we scored a respectable medal tally. Four Gold medals is the same as last year's opener. Eight Silver medals is one extra. We lacked a few Bronze medals (four to be exact), but with the illness suffered in the latter half of last year, that's probably not surprising. The end of 2019 was a bumpy road, that's for sure. Times such as we've just experienced are frustrating and demoralising for swimmers, parents, and coaches alike. Hopefully we're past the...

This Saturday saw a rather special event on the Dartes calendar. An enormous amount of work went in to making the 2020 Masquerade Ball a raving success. Congratulations to Chairperson Gail Burton for masterminding the event and making it work so well. Hopefully the first of many events in the future. It isn't the first Ball Dartes has hosted though. For that we need to head back to September 2008 and Castlepark Stadium. A similar black tie event that also proved popular among glamour starved swim parents. It's safe to...