Race nights wrapped up for Stingrays’ 2022/23 season

Narrabri Stingrays Swimming Club hosted its final race night of the 2022-23 swimming season last week on Monday.’

Every Monday night during the season, the Stingrays host race nights to give club swimmers a chance to swim in a more competitive environment, to practise their race skills.

Events change each week, and the Stingrays swimmers have a chance to accumulate points when they swim a personal best time.

Events range from 25 metres in all of the swimming strokes, through to the 400-metre freestyle and individual medley.

Race night also encourages the club’s youngest swimmers to become familiar with racing styles and then ultimately they will swim in carnivals without concern.

This year, the starting time of the Stingrays’ race nights was brought forward half and hour as a result of the number of competitors compared to last year.

Each night ran from 5.30-7pm.

Swimmers gain points by participating, as well as from achieving their PBs.

Results are collated each week after volunteer timekeepers, which include parents, older siblings and other family members, collect times for each swimmer at the end of each race.

While waiting for races, swimmers interact, play and chat while parents and family members socialise, which creates a great club atmosphere.

At the end of the night the club cooks a barbecue so nobody goes home with an empty stomach.

There were two new initiatives that were trialled during the Stingrays’ 2022/23 season.

One was a free training session prior to race night that was run by the coach, which focussed on dives, starts, turns and finishes.

There were also four come and try race night sessions where swimmers who were not club members were encouraged to come and race.

The club provided a free barbecue for all swimmers during those four weeks.

Club officials labelled the come and try nights as being very successful with much positive feedback received from families who hope to join the club next season.

Race nights also include three nights at the end of the season in which the club holds its club championship.

Usually, race night is run purely on similar times competing against each other, whilst club championships matches the same-aged swimmers against each other.

This season, the club invested in a modern starter that matches the likes of those at Olympic Park in Sydney with the capacity for electronic timing for carnivals.

Swimmers have since become very familiar with the sounds that they will hear at inter town and representative carnivals.

Narrabri Stingrays Swimming Club coach Jocelyn Smith described race nights as having a great family atmosphere and she said that the children love it.