It has been a busy few months for the Huskies swim team since I started as head coach in January. We had two time trials in January and February for swimmers to make the qualifying times in the lead up to the Singapore Junior and Senior Age Group Nationals held in March. The team also participated in a friendly meet at Gems World Academy (GWA) and hosted two other events.

We had only been training together for nine days when the TYR national time trials were held on 20-22 January and it was wonderful to see these athletes in competition. Maria Lee attempted a 200m backstroke and placed 9th overall in the girls 12 years category. Daigo Mimuro had an outstanding 50m freestyle to swim 28.75 and Xenia Groensedt was just off her personal best at 29.28.

In the February time trial, Rowan Obach and Luke Laycock showed that hard work during training was paying off with all their times being personal bests. Luke made the 200 metre individual medley (IM) qualifying entry time (QET) and Rowan made both the 50m butterfly and 100m backstroke QET’s.

Our swimmers then performed well in the GWA invitational meet, competing against the French School of Singapore and GWA. Thank you to the parents for organising some much appreciated snacks and drinks for our team. Special mention goes to Thomas Anderson and Lilly Boot who had amazing 50m freestyle swims (41.18 and 36.20 respectively) and our 9-10 girls 100m IM swimmers Patricia Graboi and Chloe Loo.

At our intra-club event on 1 March, 11 club records were set including Connie Lui (100m freestyle), Zhangle Lye (100m breaststroke), Noah Laycock (100m backstroke and 200m IM), and Molly Laycock (100m breaststroke). Leopold Nurit had an outstanding 50m freestyle time, well under the 8 year boys’ QET. We also invited our JSC Squad swimmers to participate and they all performed very well. Congratulations to all the swimmer in this squad!

Unfortunately the timing of the Singapore National Age Group Swimming Championships 2017 meant that many of our swimmers could not participate as they were away on school excursions. Congratulations goes to all the swimmers who made the QET’s for this event.

The junior event took place from 10-12 March with 10 swimmers representing CIS. Nine club records were set including Noah Chaplin (100m breaststroke), Tegan Sweeney (200m IM), Kenya Tan (200m freestyle) and Shunsuke Omae (100m backstroke, 200m backstroke and 200m IM) and Leopold Nurit (50m freestyle).

The senior event was seven full days of competition with both morning heats and afternoon A & B finals for the top 20 swimmers in the age groups 13, 14 and 15 and over. Fifteen CIS swimmers participated. The meet started very well with Lee Bradford beating his own team record in the 12 year boys 200m freestyle by two seconds. Zara Miller swam a personal best of 34.29 in the 50m butterfly, Luke Laycock had an outstanding meet, setting three personal best times in three events.

Congratulations to Lucasz Latuszek and Yukina Iwata who made it to the the finals in the 200m breaststroke. Well done to other CIS swimmers who represented their clubs at this event: Nao Takahashi (who made it to the finals in all her events and placed in several), Yuki Takahashi, Ivan Martynyuk (5th in the 100m breaststroke) and Tiger Tu.

We are incredibly proud of all that our swimmers have achieved over the last few months, and look forward to watching their growth and development as athletes and team members.