It is with sadness that DASC has learnt of the recent death of Anne Robinson.
Anne served DASC as a very hard-working, dedicated and willing volunteer in various roles for at least 20 years. For much of that time and until April 2013, she was the club’s Treasurer and a member of the DASC Committee. She was heavily involved in the organisation of many DASC galas, both internal club galas and the high-level Darlington Open Meet, which was the forerunner of the Dander Meet. She manned the Club Desk almost every week. She also helped Di Pallister to organise and run Schools Swimming galas in the region.
Anne lived in Darlington her whole life. She had two girls, Joanne and Julie, who swam at DASC in the 80s(?).Because of their involvement in the club, Anne volunteered to help and gradually took on more and more roles. She loved to talk with other swimming parents at training and at galas that she took her children to, and was known widely in swimming circles throughout the area, often offering to help other clubs with their galas. She enjoyed making an input wherever and however she could, and took an active interest in the progress of many swimmers. The young swimmers and divers of DASC benefitted hugely over many years from having Anne at its heart for so long.
In the 1990s Steve Jackson coached a relative of Anne’s to dive to a good level. Her grandson Michael Robinson also joined DASC and was a very promising young swimmer during the 2000s specialising in Butterfly and Freestyle; he still holds 5 of our club gala records mostly in the 11&12 years age group. Anne delighted in his success.
As Anne’s health deteriorated, she reluctantly relinquished her various roles within the club, but became the DASC President, and enjoyed visiting the club’s galas on a few occasions, and being kept informed of how the club was progressing.
DASC sends its condolences to Anne’s family at this sad time.
The whole of the Dolphin Centre is closing until further notice, so all DASC training sessions at the Dolphin Centre are cancelled until further notice.
Longfield and Hummersknott have also confirmed closure of their pools until further notice.
Congratulations to Lucy Oliver of A1 Squad, who has been invited to take part in the 2020 Northumberland and Durham County Swimming Camps. She was selected as a result of her outstanding performances at the recent N&D Championships, where she won 7 medals, including Gold on 50m, 100m, 200m and 400m Freestyle events.
The camps will engage with athletes in the 11-year-old age group (age on 31 Dec 2020). Swimmers are invited to attend two full days in Consett, one in March, and the other in June. The timetable for each day includes two pool sessions, a land training session and a workshop.
The camps form part of the Northumberland and Durham Development Programme and will provide an opportunity for swimmers to develop their technical, tactical, physical and psychological skills with swimmers of a similar age and ability from across the county. The camps will also provide an opportunity for swimmers to work with different coaches and to train in different environments.
Last year Hugo Douglas-Reeves and Ben Matthias took part in these camps, and in 2018 DASC was represented at them by Alex Boyer, Ruby Diment and Lewis Kestle. All are still training hard with DASC and continuing to make great progress.
We hope that Lucy will find the camps interesting and enjoyable.
A huge well done to all Darlington ASC swimmers who competed in the N&D Teams Day at Sunderland. What an amazing day. All swimmers executed great team spirit and were rewarded with 11 medals.
Congratulations to all the swimmers who competed in the second round of the Diddy League this morning. The Darlington Team finished 3rd overall and achieved the most 1st Places.
PLACES
SCORING
POINTS
LN
CLUB
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
DQ’s
NP’s
EVENTS
CHECK
1
Darlington
15
5
6
4
5
3
9
2
38
164
2
Alnwick Dolphins
8
9
8
11
4
1
6
2
41
167
3
South Tyneside
11
11
14
6
5
1
1
0
48
206
4
North Tyneside
1
6
8
7
12
10
6
5
44
123
5
Chester le Street
9
11
4
4
1
1
7
12
30
128
6
Richmond
5
7
6
8
9
6
4
4
41
137
Well done to the following swimmers who competed in this round.
What a fantastic performance from DASC swimmers at the two weekends of the N&D Championships held at Sunderland Aquatic Centre 50m pool. Congratulations on medals won, Top Ten placings achieved, PB long course times rewritten, and effort, determination and spirit on display by Team DASC including its coaches and supporters in the stands.
The format of the Championships changes over the years, but, having looked at previous year’s results, I think it accurate to say that this has been the most successful overall performance by DASC at the N&D Championships during Glen Fenby’s time as DASC Head Coach in a number of ways.
We had 38 swimmers who achieved qualifying times, and 35 of them competed in at least one event.
There were about 210 events that we had qualifiers for, and we had swimmers in 161 of those.
We finished with a great total of 21 medals, the previous best totals having been 16 last year and 15 in 2018.
Medallists
Our most decorated swimmer was Lucy Oliverin the 10/11 agegroup who won a superb 7 medals, 4 of them Gold in the 50m, 100m, 200m and 400m Freestyle, and other medals on Backstroke and Butterfly events. Ruby Diment in the 13 years age group was, as always, competing in a large number of events and came away with 5 medals including two Backstroke Golds, one of which was a very exciting tie in the 50m event. Harriet Rogers finished with 4 medals including a hugely dominant performance to win Gold in the 16 years & over 50m Freestyle, almost 1.3 seconds ahead of the next placed swimmer who is a GB International. Laura Burgess is N&D Champion in the 14 years 100m Freestyle. It was also great to see Johnson Bache, Alex Boyer, Ben Matthias and Niamh Kay picking up medals too.
Top Tens
It was very pleasing to see 46 other Top Ten placings in finals or HDW events. As well as the swimmers named above, Matthew Burgess, Emily Burrell, Alice Day, Hugo Douglas-Reeves, Jack Hurworth, Isabel Jones, Lewis Kestle, James McLeary, Molly Mooney, Evan Reeves, Kirsty Warwick and Harry Whitfield(with a year still to go in his agegroup) all finished with one or more.
Breaking Through
It is a real step up in any swimmer’s journey when they achieve their first N&D Qualifying Time and compete against the best in the Northumberland & Durham area. So well done to those who made it, some after several years of trying very hard. They include Emma Carter, Tiegan Flynn, Isabel Jones, David Smith, Charlie Stephenson, Isabelle Stephenson, Maisie Williams and Lucy Wray.
Personal Bests
There were a huge number of PB times set by swimmers of all ages. Many, especially the younger swimmers, produced huge margins of improvement on previous best times and set long course PBs which are now much faster than their short course times!
Harriet Rogers
To add more detail to the quality of Harriet’s 50m Freestyle performance:
Her time in the heats and then again in the final are new N&D Long Course Junior records, her time in the final being 0.7 seconds faster than the previous record set in 2014. It may not sound a lot but is a 2.6% improvement on the previous record, a very big step up at this level.
The British Record for a 15-year-old swimmer (which is Harriet’s current age) was set in 2006 at 25.54 seconds by Fran Halsall, who only fairly recently retired as a very successful and long-serving GB International swimmer winning Commonwealth, European and World Championship medals on sprint Freestyle and Butterfly events.
This is the 5thfastest time recorded in the last 12 months by a GB woman of any age.
It is hard to exaggerate the excellence of this performance, which comes on the back of a superb string of improvements to her times in this event (and others) at high level competitions over the last couple of years. We wish her continued upward success, as people well beyond the N&D area sit up and take notice of what Harriet is achieving.
Please find below the results from the internal 400m Free Gala.Well done to all of those swimming the event for the first time, and to those who recorded a Personal Best time. There were a lot of great swims across all the squads and agegroups involved.
Please make a record of the time that you swum especially if it was your first attempt at the event or it was a PB. These times will not appear on the British Swimming database because it was an unlicensed gala.
It was great to kick off the 2020 series of Club Galas with another 3 new club gala records being set. Matthew Burgess got his name on the Club Gala Records for the first time with a big PB swim of 4.51.66 in the 11&12 years age group. Lucy Oliver knocked a massive 15 seconds off the previous record in the 10 years age group with a new record of 5.09.17. Harriet Rogers set a new record in the 15&over age group of 4.32.10 also with a PB performance.
Please find attached the times and placings for DASC swimmers after the first weekend of two at the N&D Championships at Sunderland. There is also a list of our medallists (8 medals) and other swimmers finishing in the Top Ten in events (21). There were many long course PBs recorded. It was great to see some, including youngsters, competing at this level for the first time, and even making finals and winning medals. Congratulations.
