Match Report: Micro A off to a great start!
It’s been two years since the North West Micro League last ran so on Sunday 27th February there were lots of swimmers across all the age groups (9,10,11 and 12 years old) making the journey to Wigan to compete in Micro for the very first time.
The North West Micro Swimming League comprises of three divisions with the clubs A team competing in Division 1.
Over the next few months there are three more matches and Leyland will compete against teams from Wigan, Southport, Blackpool, Fleetwood, Preston and Ormskirk.
Round 1 saw Leyland A swimming in Wigan against teams from Wigan, Ormskirk and Southport.
Megan Ellis and Finley Warburton drew lane 5 for Barracudas and after warm up racing began.
First up were our oldest swimmers competing in the 12-year-old girls medley relay where each swimmer races over 50 metres. The girls got us off to a great start with a well-earned second place and a personal best (pb) time for Maiya Taylor in the breaststroke. This was followed by the 12-year-old boys where Finlay Warburton, Matthew Johnson, Johnny Wright and a very determined Sebastian Hailwood secured our first win of the afternoon with Matthew and Sebastian both getting pbs.
Following on from the oldest swimmers were the youngest in the pool with the 9-year-old swimmers getting their first taste of Micro.
Our nine-year-olds were flying and secured two very impressive wins in the relay races. Well done to Caoimhe Ruscoe, George Watkinson, Elizabeth Bates and Myles Best who won the freestyle relay and Erin Morris, Caoimhe Ruscoe, Thomas Owens and George Watkinson for winning the medley relay later in the competition.
The first individual event of the competition was the nine year old 25 metre freestyle won by Erin Morris. Big sister Hannah will need to watch out as fast swimming obviously runs in the family! Erin won the freestyle convincingly in a personal best time of 17.21 and went on to win the backstroke with an equally impressive swim.
More wins followed in the individual events for Myles Best (breaststroke), Thomas Owens (backstroke), Elsie Kay (butterfly and freestyle), Phillipa Rankin (freestyle) and Thomas Owens (Butterfly) and at the midway point Southport and Leyland were in joint first place with 66 points each.
Prior to the weekend Club President Elaine Fitchie posted on Facebook a quotation from Vince Lombardi: ‘Winning isn’t everything but wanting to win is’ and that’s exactly what our swimmers wanted!
Every single point which was won by our swimmers was going to count in the race to the finish and they all fought hard to do as well as they could. Throughout the whole match Leyland recorded no disqualifications which means that all those Wednesday and Thursday night ‘take-over’ Micro practice sessions had paid off!
The competition between Leyland and Southport remained close and as always, the final event of the afternoon was the mixed freestyle cannon. This was swum by Erin Morris, Thomas Owens, Elsie Kay, Max Roberts, Philippa Rankin, Finlay Metcalfe, Megan Ellis and Johnny Wright while the rest of the team, poolside helpers and Chief Coach cheered on from the side. First place to Leyland!
All 30 swimmers should be proud of the way they swam and the great start they have made to the 2022 Micro Season. Over the course of 47 events there were 96 individual swims and 38 personal best times recorded.
The final scores were added up as the canon concluded the event with the results announced in reverse order:
Ormskirk A – 68 points
Wigan A – 110 points
Southport A – 136 points
Leyland A – 145 points
Well done to all the swimmers involved and in the words of Gillian Rankin our Chief Coach ‘Proud coach. Thankyou and well done Everyone. It’s great to be back’