Category: News

The ‘Agora’ was the meeting ground for citizens in Ancient Greece. In modern day equivalent for Abbotsleigh Swimming Club is the ‘seating’ overlooking the pool.

Today it was the ‘seating’ overlooking Knox pool. And there the good citizens of Abbotsleigh set about their ancient rituals of warm up, marshall, race, debrief, swim down, eat, gossip, play with the iPad, nearly miss out on their next event, etc, etc. All this under the watchful eyes of their elder bag carriers, caterers and financiers.

Whilst the juniors swam, the seniors chatted. Carneades has a new kitten and Nichomedes is expecting a baby. Myia’s daughter has lost her cossie and cap (but not to worry they didn’t fit anyway so a visit to the clothier is due). Phidias has a new job, Nicomedes is baking lamb for dinner, and Isaeus has found a quiet spot to operate his electronic abacus.

And Maximus God of All Swimming was smiling. PBs were swum. State times were achieved. DQs were ignored. Sausages were sizzled. Nobody spent $15 on car parking. All thanks to the almighty Titans of Knox Pymble. Let’s do it all again same time, same place next week at the SMNE Distance Meet!

Many thanks to Brandon, Leanne, Tim, Emily and Swimming Australia for these photos.

Congratulations team Abbotsleigh! Full report here.

Our 2015 National Age campaign has officially kicked off. Olympian John Farrow inspired, educated and emotionally moved the team during his presentation to the team. Our swimmers then did their best to eat the mountain of breakfast provided for them at Matt’s place. Remarkably there were still left-overs at the end – great job parents!

Leanne and Brandon delivered a pre-competition briefing that rivalled John’s talk for impact. A memory jogger of the key themes filled inboxes later in the day. Inspirational quotes were then carefully written on to the beautifully illustrated canvas produced by unofficial team artist Tash.

Such is the size of our squad this year that we have outgrown the Abbotsleigh bus for the pre-trip to sopac to feel the water and collect accreditation passes.

Go Abbotsleigh! Photos will be posted here as they are received.

National swimmers, their parents and siblings were educated and entertained my a highly motivating talk from Olympian John Farrow today.

John is a winter Olympian in the very scary sport of Skeleton. He told his amazing story of being “a naturally talented but lazy athlete” who excelled in Athletics, Rugby and then International Mountain Biking before converting to Skeleton.

He drew multiple parallels between the Swimming and Skeleton sports as he skilfully told his story alongside teaching key techniques to successfully perform at the highest level. DIY prosthetics, jellyfish and fast cars all featured in his engaging tale of success and resilience.

We were truly privileged to host John. Personally I was amazed at the number of different take-aways that audience members were excitedly discussing afterwards. We look forward to watching John in future.

Considering the amount of One Direction that Brandon endured in the car on the way to Homebush, he was remarkably happy. Raf and Tim most probably weren’t listening to Abba (who?) in the bus. Regardless of the musical entertainment on the way, the excitement really kicked in when 40 Abbotsleigh swimmers and their parents arrived to cheer along Australian swimming stars at the National Open Swimming Championships.

First up, Magnussen vs. McEvoy in a brief and massive surge of fast moving white water, more commonly known as the mens 50m freestyle. The Campbell sisters did their thing, Gina Rinehart did hers (not swimming); and Chris our pres was on duty for TV interviews, medal presentations and feeding his girls their dinner.

This was no ordinary visit to SOPAC. Many thanks for all those that put together an exciting and memorable night.

The just released current season swimming rankings reflect many great results for our Club swimmers. Leanne and Brandon’s hard work, commitment and motivational skills aligned with the swimmers solid work ethic has resulted in many outstanding achievements.

Congratulations to all swimmers on your outstanding results against the best age swimmers in Australia.

See the PDF file here which lists the Abbotsleigh swimmers position in the top 25 national long course rankings.

Well done to all! Abbotsleigh is on the march.

Note: a new ‘National Rankings’ page has been added to the website under ‘Information’ to allow easy future reference.

Our coaches and many of the girls in Abbotsleigh Swim Club compete for the school. Today the school swim team won IGSSA.

The Independent Girls’ Schools Swimming Association (IGSSA) annual carnival is the pinnacle of competition between member schools. Held at Sopac, over a thousand supporters are bussed in from across the State to cheer along their swimmers. The announcer struggles to be heard and the floor moves under the weight of passionate crowds jumping in unison.

The carnival is all about team. Swimmers may swim a maximum of 4 events and points are awarded according to placings in events. The team with the highest number of points wins. There is intense rivalry between teams – Abbotsleigh last won in 2010 and were determined to claim back the title from PLC Sydney who had triumphed every year since.

Abbotsleigh swimmers swam very controlled races in the morning heats to secure places in the finals. In the afternoon they were unleashed to swim their best. Abbotsleigh took an early points lead with impressive freestyle performances, but PLC Sydney fought back to lead during the form strokes. With 1 event to go only 2 points separated Abbotsleigh from PLC Sydney, and so it all came down to the 6 x 50m all age freestyle relay. PLC had taken line honours during the heats, could Abbotsleigh create some magic in the final?

Mrs Poole, Mrs Wheatley, Mr Everingham, Mr Baltitude, Leanne, Brandon, the parents, the whole Sopac audience, and the entire Abbotsleigh swimming team watched as Holly Nelson confidently climbed onto the blocks to launch our winning bid. 2’49.71″ later Abbotsleigh hit the wall first in a record breaking time and the celebrations started.

Abbotsleigh set 6 new IGSSA records and 1 new State record (pending official confirmation) during the day. Special mention also goes to our club swimmers competing for other schools.

Thanks to Tim Ong for these great photos. Videos of all the finals are available here.