Stingrays excited about swim season

Narrabri Stingrays swimming club swimmers are well and truly ready for the 2019-20 season.

Head coach Fiona Connell ran a training program throughout winter to keep the Stingrays fit and fresh, and she told The Courier that the local swimmers were well and truly prepared for the coming campaign.

“Winter season went really well,” Connell said.

“We had a couple of our swimmers compete in carnivals in term 2 which they swam really well at.

“The swimmers who went to carnivals during winter pulled out some really great PBs.”

“[Throughout winter] we’ve had really great attendance at training, we even ran a casual option for swimmers who play other sports and because of that we’ve seen most of our members at some point during winter.

“Currently we have half our squad here on a consistent basis.”

While the Narrabri Aquatic Centre’s outdoor pool is not yet ready for use, training for the 2019-20 season
officially began in September in the indoor pool.

However, the club is only running limited sessions until late October when it can use the main pool and offer full sessions.

The season itself officially began on Tuesday and Connell said that by the end of October the club would have competed at its first carnival.

“Throughout October we have a couple of little carnivals that some of our members have been picked by the Area to go to and we have a couple doing an open water swim down in Penrith,” she said.

“Our first big target meet as a club will be in Dubbo.”

Three swimmers will travel to Penrith to compete at the Sydney International Regatta Centre on Saturday, October 26.

Clare Jensen will compete in a 5km swim and Alex Mison and Addi Hartog-Smith will both enter 1km events.

The following day those three swimmers will back up at the Dubbo carnival where they will join the rest of the Stingrays squad.

Connell has set several goals for the squad for the coming season, one of which is qualifying for Country Championships for the competitive swimmers.

“I’ve outlined some goals especially around attendance and participation,” she said.

“I’ve got a training goal for attendance and we want to increase our numbers that are attending race nights.

“Country Championships in February is our big target for our competitive guys.

“We didn’t really focus on that last season, we just focused on getting through a new season with a new coach.
“This year we’ve already got four who have qualified with a few more that are very close.”

Connell has now been the Stingrays’ head coach for about 16 months and has seen a significant improvement in the squad in that time.

“I’ve seen a huge improvement, not only in competitive swimmers but also in general,” she said.

“Our development squad’s standards have improved dramatically.

“Skills have picked up and hopefully in this new season race nights will be attended more.”

The club’s first race night for the season will be on Monday, November 4, and race nights will run every Monday night until Christmas before breaking until school resumes.

The club will host its development meeting on Sunday, February 16, and will hold its Club Championships across several afternoons in March.